


Synthesis

by follow_the_sun



Series: Shrinkyclinks Hijinks [2]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Humor, Anxiety Disorder, Avenger Bucky Barnes, Blow Jobs, Body Dysphoria, Brief ableist language, Bucky Barnes as Captain America, Bucky Barnes' Coffee Addiction, Canon Disabled Character, Christmas, De-Serumed Steve Rogers, Deaf Clint Barton, Depression, Doombots, Extremis, First Fight, Heimdall: How Does He Work?, I'm So Meta Even This Acronym, Iron Man 3, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Sassy Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Has Issues, Stevie NO!, Swearing, The Most Literal Deus Ex Machina, brief homophobic language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-28
Updated: 2016-08-22
Packaged: 2018-05-23 19:17:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 18
Words: 75,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6127366
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/follow_the_sun/pseuds/follow_the_sun
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky Barnes, currently Captain America, is a war vet with a prosthetic arm, an anxiety disorder, and a serious coffee habit. Steve Rogers, formerly Captain America, is a tiny bundle of attitude who hasn’t really come to terms with the fact that he was de-super-serumed in 1945. Steve wants Bucky to take over his old job and find out what S.H.I.E.L.D. is hiding, Bucky wants to punch Tony Stark in the face, Tony wants to fight the Mandarin, and Clint just wants someone to watch his dog. Well, no one ever said that either love or Avenging would be a walk in the park.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This story will make much more sense if you've read [Part 1](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6015049/chapters/13804096). It's short and action-packed, I promise!

_Synthesis: a combination of two or more entities that together form something new._

  

The shield is heavier than it looks.

That’s not a metaphor for the weight of responsibility that goes along with being Captain America, although Bucky knows that Sam will have a field day with him if he ever voices the thought. Nope, he’s being completely literal about this. The thing they never mention in the books about American Hero Steve Rogers is that the infamous vibranium shield is a big, heavy, awkward-to-carry-on-the-subway piece of metal that’s great for using to, you know, _shield yourself,_ but the whole throwing thing? It’s fucking _difficult_. Bucky had briefly thought he might have a jump on the whole business on account of having played plenty of Frisbee with Clint’s dog, but it turns out that throwing plastic discs at dog-height doesn’t have that much bearing on throwing metal ones at human-height. The shield doesn’t slow down as much on the rebound as it seems like it should, maybe because of the whole vibration-absorbing thing, and something about the shape of the edge keeps making it bounce up instead of down when it hits the wall, so he keeps misjudging and having to jump and stretch to grab it—not the greatest thing in the world, given that he’s still healing from getting body-slammed into a building during the alien attack a month ago. And the shield might absorb vibrations itself but it sure can create them if, say, you misjudge a catch with a metal hand and set yourself up for a weird rattling effect that goes all the way up your shoulder.

“How the hell did you catch this thing without destroying your hands?” he’d asked Steve, a couple of nights earlier. He’d accidentally walked into it on the way to the crappy, cold, no-water-pressure shower in Steve’s shithole apartment, and he’d almost broken a toe.

“Bone conditioning,” Steve had murmured sleepily from the futon.

“What?”

“Bone conditioning. It’s a martial arts thing. You stress the bone over and over, you get microfractures, they heal stronger. C’mere.” He beckoned, and Bucky went back—giving the shield a wide berth—and took the hand Steve stretched out to him. Steve had gripped his fingers with startling strength. “Bones are thicker, and there's even a lump right there where I really broke this one. See?”

“Huh.” Not about to pass up an opportunity, Bucky had kissed the palm of Steve’s hand, then started to work his way down the wrist. Until now, he’d only seen Steve’s hands as an artist’s hands, not tough and callused like his—well, like the one of his that isn’t polished to a shine. “How come you didn’t lose that when you got de-serumed?”

“I think it’s because I worked for that myself, instead of having it given to me in a lab. Schmidt didn’t turn back the clock on my body to before the serum, just undid its effects. Still had all the scars I picked up in the war, when I woke up in… hey, if you’re gonna do that, get down here and do it like you mean it.”

“Fine. I hate your crappy shower anyway. Stevie,” he’d said, flopping back on the bed, “why don’t you just come live at my place where there’s decent water pressure?”

Steve rolled his eyes. “Don’t be stupid, jerk.”

“I’m serious, punk. How great would it be? Sleepover every night. We can build a pillow fort with the couch cushions. You don’t even have to pay rent. All you gotta do is shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash, suck my dick occasionally…”

He was trying to shock Steve into laughing, which still frequently works, but that time Steve just gave him a stern look. “Bucky, you can’t mean that. We haven’t even been dating for a month yet.”

“So what? I have a metal arm and you were born in 1918. Nothing about us is normal, and you know I love you if I’m here in spite of you not even having a decent coffee pot. Pleeeease just come live at my place,” he’d said, drawing it out into an exaggerated whine, and then he’d stopped, seeing Steve’s face. “What?”

“You’re in love with me?”

“Yeah. Why’re you surprised? You just said I was stupid. Hey…” Steve’s expression was, well, thunderstruck. “Oh, shit. It’s way too soon to say that, isn’t it? Did I just really fuck up? I’m sorry. You don’t have to say it back, or _feel_ it back, or… Please don’t run away screaming.”

“You… you didn’t fuck up,” Steve says, which Bucky would take as a minor triumph in and of itself if he wasn’t so nervous. “And I’m… not sorry you said it, but… Give me some time to process, okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Yeah,” Bucky said, and they haven’t talked about either love or apartments since, but Steve hasn’t bolted either, which is something.

Now Bucky just needs to continue to keep him from bolting for the next sixty years or so. For a guy who’s already taking four pills on a _good_ day to fend off the constant gnawing anxiety that threatens to fuck up his life at every turn, what could possibly go wrong about that?

So anyway, bone conditioning. Bucky doesn’t know how microfractures feel exactly, but breaking his own bones on purpose is not an idea that thrills him. Oh, well, at least he’s only going to have to do it for one hand. Silver linings, he thinks, hoisting the shield again. He’ll try throwing it a little lower this time, see if he can work out the rebound problem. It’s just like learning to shoot: practice, consistency, patience, routine. All things that are good for him, calming and rational things.

He breathes in, takes aim, flings the shield at the wall, and says, “Fuck!” as it ricochets back, missing his head by less than two inches.

“Training woes?” says a voice behind him, and it’s all Bucky can do not to yelp again and give Tony fucking Stark the satisfaction of pulling a jump-scare on him. He turns. Stark is in jeans and an AC/DC T-shirt, the blue ring of the arc reactor visible through the fabric; he’s caught the shield with one of the pair of Iron Man gauntlets he’s wearing.

Bucky fights down a wave of possessive jealousy. After all, it’s not like he’s doing so hot with the thing. “Hope I’m not in your way,” he says, stopping short of apologizing for taking over Stark’s basement training room; Pepper said it was okay and Pepper’s word is law in Stark—er—Avengers Tower. “This was the only place I could think of where I could practice and not risk that thing hitting anybody on a bad rebound.”

“Except yourself? You know, I could build a targeting system into that arm, if you wanted. Give me an excuse to upgrade the headgear. You’re gonna be Cap, we ought to put you in a helmet. Traditional, you know, my dad would approve.”

Bucky looks at the guy. Stark is talking a mile a minute and acting like he has no brain-to-mouth filter. That’s normal, so why is he sensing something off tonight? “You sure I’m gonna get the job?”

“What, I get a say in this now? I’m not the team leader, Angry Puppy Cap’s the team leader. I just pay for everything and design everything and make everybody look cooler.”

Bucky’s about to make a sharp comment about that when he finally puts his finger on what’s bugging him: Stark looks just a tiny bit frayed around the eyes, like he hasn’t been sleeping. It’s a look Bucky knows. He also knows that there’s absolutely no percentage in telling the guy to shove his pride and go talk to a doctor like a fucking grownup. “Are those new?” he asks instead, indicating the gauntlets. “You upgrading the suit?”

“Replacing. Had to skip the spinning rims on the last round.”

“Must've killed you to have to sacrifice your personal style just to save Manhattan,” Bucky says, before he can stop himself.

“Hey, don’t take it personally, Jaime Sommers.” Stark hands the shield back to him and pats his metal shoulder. “We can’t all look this good. I’m sure there’s someone the Army sweatpants look really works for, it was worth giving it a shot to see if it was you.”

 _Shit._ Bucky really, sincerely wants to punch Stark in the face and get it over with. But Stark being part of the team is not going away any time soon, and if Bucky wants to be an Avenger, much less keep dating the leader of the Avengers, he’s going to have to figure out a way around this. Bucky’s starting to have an uncomfortable feeling he hates Stark so much because they’re actually too much alike: a couple of wisecracking assholes hiding a lot of collateral damage.

Then again… maybe he can work with that.

“You got any more of the new suit put together?” he asks.

“A few pieces. Enough to fend off global catastrophe in a pinch.”

“Put ’em on, let’s spar.”

“Heh. Good one, Barnes.”

“No, really. Let’s go. Shield against armor. Unless you’re scared.”

Stark’s mouth twitches. “You really want to go with juvenile trash talk here?”

“Buddy, my trash talk is at the graduate level. C’mon.” He bumps Stark’s arm with the shield. “Fight me, Pacific Rim.”

“Oh, Barnes, you _did not,”_ Stark says, and swings the gauntleted fist, while Bucky brings up the shield, grinning. Oh, yeah. It’s _on._

 

“So tell me about the trouble in paradise,” Clint Barton says, dropping into the seat across the table.

Steve looks up and feels the warm smile of greeting slide off his face. “Huh?”

“Your message,” Clint says, settling in at the table and picking up the drinks menu. “You and Barnes have been together for what, about a month, you’re practically joined at the hip, and today you text me out of the blue asking to meet for lunch and he’s not here. Which, by the way, _nobody_ starts a text with ‘Dear Clint’ and ends it with ‘Yours sincerely,’ FYI. So, did you two lovebirds finally have your first fight or what?”

“Fight?” Steve says, startled. “No, God, no. Bucky is… he’s amazing. He, well, actually,” Steve feels himself blush, “he wants me to move into your building with him.”

“What?” Clint claps his hand over his eyes and shakes his head, making a sound between a laugh and a groan. “Aww, Barnes, no. That’s just fucking _classic.”_

“I’m… not sure I follow,” Steve says, carefully. Okay, yes, to be honest, he _did_ ask to meet Clint because he wanted to talk to somebody who knows Bucky better than he does. Sam Wilson would have been his first choice, but Sam is also a full-time counselor at the VA, and Steve knows from the war that the last thing you want after a day of solving problems is for somebody to come to you with a fresh crisis when you’re off duty. But this isn’t the reaction he was expecting from Clint, either.

“You wanted to know if this is normal for him, right? Well, technically, it isn’t; he’s had a couple steady partners since I’ve known him, but you’re the first one he’s asked to cohabit. But having no boundaries whatsoever, that is kind of normal for him, actually. The thing is, Cap—”

“Don’t do that,” Steve says sharply.

“Hm?”

“Don’t call me Cap. I’m not him anymore.”

“Then what do we call you?”

“Steve,” says Steve. “Or Steven, if you wanna be fancy.”

Clint shakes his head. “Thing is, _Steve,_ I don’t think he even means it as a romantic thing. Bucky’s a natural protector. Last year, when we had the mess with the tracksuit bros, he came by one night and asked if he could help. I told him I could sort it out on my own, and he said, ‘Sure, but you don’t _have_ to, dumbass.’ I think this is the same as that. You’ve got a crappy place, he’s got a nicer one, he wants to help—I'm sure he'd be asking you to move in even if he wasn’t obviously head over heels in love with you. But if you tell him to back off, he will, no questions asked.”

“What? No. I’m not worried about our relationship moving too fast. I learned the hard way that waiting too long is a lot worse than never taking a chance.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“The problem is, what the hell have I got to offer a guy like Bucky Barnes?”

It always gets people’s attention when he swears, as if he's supposed to be some kind of saint. Well, he’s definitely not that. The only reason he usually watches his language, if not his mouth more generally, is because his mother, God rest her, used to say she raised him better than that. Clint’s clearly surprised, but he shrugs it off better than most people. “Well,” he says, grinning, “given how much more relaxed he’s been lately, I’m guessing you’ve figured out at least one thing he appreciates.”

“Clint, I’m serious.”

“Seriously, then, the guy hasn’t shut up about how great he thinks you are all week. He loves your whole thing about standing up to bullies and speaking truth to power. He loves your sarcastic asshole sense of humor. He loves how you just roll with whatever crazy scheme he’s cooking up. Heck, Natasha says he actually went all Jane Austen on her at one point, pulling out words like _steadfast_ and _trustworthy_ and _courageous…”_ Clint pauses. “What?”

“Courageous.” Steve sighs. “I hate when people think I was brave. I can’t get it through to anybody that when I joined the Army, I was only doing what millions of other men had already done. Or that maybe I was willing to run into danger because I never felt like I had all that much to lose.”

“He wasn’t talking about the Captain America thing,” Clint says.

“No?”

“He was talking about waking up seventy years in your own future, with nothing but S.H.I.E.L.D.’s party line about the way the world ought to be, and not buying into their bullshit. Walking out to start your own life, turning your back on whatever they would’ve tried to make you into.”

“Make me into? What does that mean?”

“Avenger I may be, but whatever S.H.I.E.L.D. was planning for you is still above my clearance level, friend.”

S.H.I.E.L.D. had plans for him? It’s something Steve has never considered before. The truth is, he left when he did because he knew that if he didn’t strike out on his own, he’d always be seen as an object of pity, a charity case at best and a mistake at worst: _If we’d known he got un-super-powered, we would’ve left him in the ice._ He’s still not sure he trusts them, but now he wonders what he missed. There’s no time to think about it, though, because Clint is continuing, “And Bucky’s not exactly a picnic, either. I love the guy, but not everybody sees past the disabled, traumatized war vet with a lot of scars and a truckload of emotional issues and too much noise in his head.”

“I don’t care about the scars. And he’s not disabled—”

“Yeah, I know he says that because he has a working hand, and he knows guys who are getting by with worse injuries, but there’s not a lot he wouldn’t do to be able to feel what he touches on that side, or go swimming without getting stared at. You can be well-adjusted and still miss what you lost.” Clint indicates his hearing aids, and says, “Tell me _you_ don’t agree.”

“We’ve all taken some hits,” Steve concurs.

“Yeah. But, hey, just in general? Let me tell you something that Laura told me.” Clint leans forward, his expression exceptionally serious. “Being in a relationship isn’t about finding somebody who’s perfect. Everybody’s got their shit. The trick is finding somebody whose shit you can put up with, and who doesn’t mind putting up with yours because they think you’re worth it. You trust Bucky Barnes?”

“Of course.”

“Then trust him to know what he wants when he chooses you.”

Steve is quiet for a long moment. Then he takes his phone out of his pocket. “How are you supposed to do the greeting when you send a text, then?”

“You don’t. You just say what you want to say. Why?”

“There’s something I gotta do.”

 

When Bucky got out of bed this morning, he didn’t expect that he’d end his afternoon lying on the floor of the Avengers Tower training room bruised and laughing, next to an equally winded and amused Tony Stark, of all people. But there it is: the sparring was getting fairly intense when Stark— _Tony,_ he’s going to get that, Tony—popped a repulsor ray at the shield that was so close and so poorly (or perfectly) angled that the blast knocked both of them over. As soon as he got his breath back, Bucky cracked up at the sheer absurdity of it, and then, surprisingly, Tony did the same. “Tony,” he says, when he finally sits up, “you’re all right, you know that?”

“All right for a, what was it you called me? A rich narcissist asshole?”

“Rich _fucking_ narcissist asshole, which you are.” Tony shrugs and makes a can’t-disagree face. “But you called me Anakin Skywalker, so I think it evens out. Even though I’m _clearly_ Luke, man. Leaving aside the whole Sith-Jedi thing, I only got my arm chopped off; I never fell in lava.”

“So my comedy routines are going to be graded for accuracy from here on out?”

“Yeah, now that you’ve got another nerd on your team, you’re gonna have to up your game, Red Power Ranger.”

“Whoooa,” Tony says, obviously delighted.

“That was a good workout,” Bucky says, and decides this is finally going well enough to take a chance. “I’m gonna have a lot less trouble sleeping after a round like that.”

“What, you need to drift off, you don’t just have Grandpa Rogers tell you a tale of the good old days?”

“Hey,” Bucky says, “a little respect for my boyfriend. And his ‘good old days’ are mostly the Great Depression, so, no, he doesn’t love talking about bread lines and tuberculosis.”

“See that? I’m drifting off already.” Tony’s phone—which is, improbably, both undamaged and still in his pocket—buzzes, and Bucky holds back a sigh. Tony’s clearly not interested in talking about the elephant in the room, and he doesn’t know the guy well enough to press it, which means he can’t help, which shouldn’t be annoying but is. “Speak of the devil,” he says, “Rogers texted me. Look at that, he’s learned how to use a cell phone. It’s adorable. Just like that bird that pecks out tweets during the Puppy Bowl.”

Bucky should probably be defending Steve here, too, but actually, he’s just thinking, _Oh, God, please let him not have_ signed _it this time._ “Avengers business?” he asks.

“In a sense. You have dinner plans?”

“Uh, no, but I do have shower-after-workout-so-I-don’t-stink plans.”

“Put them on hold. You and Bae are having dinner with me and Pepper tonight, and I’ve got something you need to see first. Jarvis!” Tony says to the ceiling—or more properly, Bucky supposes, to the artificial intelligence that runs the building. Bucky hasn’t actually spoken to it yet; part of his “catch Steve up on seventy years of pop culture” plan included watching _2001_ over the weekend and, well, he’ll just keep a polite distance from AIs for the moment. “Send Dum-E down here for cleanup. We’re heading to the seventy-sixth floor. And get the usual sushi order, plus two.”

“Of course, sir,” says a voice from the ceiling, and Bucky definitely doesn’t shudder, not even slightly.

 

By the seventy-sixth floor, Tony really did mean the _entire seventy-sixth floor._ There’s a private elevator with an actual handprint scanner—Tony gives him the stink-eye when he holds up his left hand as a joke, but the AI, to his surprise, does seem sort of dryly amused. The elevator lets them out in a little foyer, and from there, they step into a living room that’s literally larger than the last two apartments Bucky has lived in combined. It’s clearly staged to impress a renter, with just a couple of pieces of furniture scattered around, but Bucky can tell that most of those pieces probably cost more than his motorcycle. Most of one wall is a skyline view of Manhattan—God, he can see fucking Central Park from here. He lets out a low whistle, and Tony seems gratified.

“So. Kitchen’s through there, four bedrooms and the master suite’s that way, and through there is stairwell access to a VIP common area if you go down and a rooftop pool if you go up. All the amenities, obviously. Coffee shop in the lobby, cleaning service, delivery—anything you need, ask Jarvis, and if he can’t get it for you, he’ll ping Pepper, who can. Plus, the training facilities downstairs are 24/7, we can get you any kind of equipment you want and Jarvis can set up unique scenarios—”

“You could’ve stopped at ‘coffee shop,’” Bucky says. “It’s great, Tony, but I don’t think I could afford the electric bill on a place like this, much less the rent.”

“Housing is included in the Avengers compensation package, sir,” says the Jarvis-voice from the ceiling, and Bucky jumps _again._ Okay, living here would be amazing, but if that keeps up, it won’t be good for his heart.

“Jarvis, do you monitor everything that goes on in the building?”

“I have a great many customizable privacy settings available, sir.”

“Okay, thanks.” Bucky decides he’ll have a little chat with Tony about whether Jarvis is programmed to respect the Three Laws of Robotics, later. “So you’re saying that… that once we have the whole Avengers thing set up, once I sign on the dotted line, you’d let me live in your building in Midtown for free?”

“Well, some people would find being asked to put their life on the line to save the planet on a regular basis to be one hell of a catch.”

Bucky notes the tension behind the words, but he doubts anyone else would. He’ll try to get inside Tony’s head later, though, because right now, his own is spinning. He never wanted any of this, never asked for any of this, and Tony’s right, the Avenger-ing part is a hell of a catch, but… truth is, he’s remembering how poor him and the girls grew up, how hard his mother worked to keep food on the table after their dad died. Becca made good, she’s comfortable now and she’s made sure her kids will be looked after no matter what, but it’d be a hell of a thing to bring them up here for a visit, wouldn’t it? “I guess it’d be ungrateful of me not to take this place, then,” he says.

“Well, there’s just one very minor problem with that, Seven of Nine. This isn’t your floor.”

Bucky blinks. “I don’t understand. Why the grand tour and the sales pitch, then?”

“Because it’s mine, Buck.”

Bucky turns. Steve’s in the doorway, with Pepper Potts behind him. Each of them is carrying a beat-up cardboard box that looks almost as incongruous with the sleek surroundings as Steve does. Bucky feels that twinge he’s starting to get accustomed to, now, when he realizes those boxes are probably most of what Steve owns in the world. “The number really should’ve been a giveaway. Spirit of ’76? You know Tony can’t resist a cheap patriotism joke.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, “what’s going on here?”

“I decided I’m not moving in with you. I’m asking if you’d like to move in with me.”

Bucky stares at Steve for a moment. Then he drops the vibranium shield he’s still holding, strides across the floor, and sweeps him into one of those back-bending kisses that usually only happen in movies. Steve goes so red that Bucky can actually feel the heat coming off his face before he pulls away. “What the hell, Buck? Not in front of the company. And, ugh, please tell me you’re gonna take a shower.”

“I dunno, Steve, this apartment’s so big I might get lost if I go on my own. Maybe you better join me.”

“I… have made a horrible miscalculation,” says Tony. “This is the kind of thing we’re going to be hearing every single day? Jarvis, delete that Avengers contract we were working on from the server. No, better yet, get the plane ready, I’m heading to the house in Malibu.”

“You should kiss me like that sometime,” Pepper says, and Bucky grins. Yeah, this is going to be just fine.

 

At 4:30 in the morning, Steve gives up on trying to sleep any later and slides out from under Bucky’s arm. Obviously he should be sleeping, Bucky is moving all his stuff in here tomorrow and that’s going to take a lot more work than packing up his paltry life did, but he’s too riled up to sleep.

Bucky makes a noise like “Mmphgubwuh?” and Steve strokes his fingers through his dark hair. Asleep, with his guard down and none of the little shifts and winces that he doesn’t even know he’s doing—when the metal arm sends a twinge through his shoulder and he rolls it forward, or he’s been slumping left without realizing it and has to shift his weight to the right for counterbalance—Bucky looks a good ten years younger than he does awake. “It’s okay,” he whispers. “I’m just getting a glass of water. Go back to sleep.”

Another mutter, a word that might be “okay” if Bucky’s face wasn’t mashed into a pillow, and Steve smiles fondly as he leaves the bedroom, closing the door carefully behind him.

In the cavernous living room—it feels like a crime that it’s bigger than the entire _floor_ of the tenement he grew up in, where, as dirt poor as they were, he and his mother were the exceptions in not having five or six people crammed into one apartment—he stares at the charcoal sketch that’s thumbtacked up beside the fireplace, at Bucky’s insistence, until they can get it framed. “It’s not home until you put something personal up on the wall, Stevie,” he said, but Steve knows it’s a much bigger gesture than that, because the piece he chose is Steve’s drawing of Peggy Carter, the one he made just a few weeks after he woke up and a few days after he left S.H.I.E.L.D.

It’s a good likeness, but Steve can see the shakiness, the imprecision of some of the fine lines of Peggy’s eyes and mouth. He’d told himself he was drawing her from memory because he was still too numb from shock to mourn her like she deserved, but wasn’t it really an act of mourning for himself, too? For the second time in his life, he was getting used to his hands and arms changing size and structure, losing all the muscle memory. It would have been hard enough waking up in a completely unfamiliar world seventy years in the future without also waking up back in his old body, the one he thought he’d permanently shrugged off in Erskine’s machine in 1943.

The future has plenty of things to recommend it, it really does, and they go way beyond central heating and the eradication of polio. Howard Stark’s son is almost as remarkable as Howard, once you get past the prickly exterior. The other Avengers are great, each in their own way: Bruce’s self-deprecating humor doesn’t get in the way of his genuine kindness, Natasha is both always on top of the situation and unexpectedly hilarious, Thor is terrifying as an enemy but big-hearted and jovial as a friend, and Clint is smarter than anybody realizes, including himself. Bucky’s friend Sam is especially easy to be around, smart and compassionate and somehow always ready with exactly the right word of advice at the right moment. And Bucky… well, he’s here now in this apartment, in _their_ apartment, because Bucky is the guy he wants to spend the rest of his life with, and no, it’s not too soon to say that, because if he’s really honest with himself, it wasn’t too soon to say that two days after they met.

But he wants to have something to offer them, too. Something more than sitting behind a computer screen in a command center, sending the rest of them out to put their lives on the line to save the brave new world.

“Jarvis,” he says softly, “can you talk to me without waking Bucky?”

Abruptly, the television clicks on, and white words scroll across the black screen. **I am switching to the visual communications mode designed for Mr. Barton’s convenience, sir. Also, I can monitor Mr. Barnes’ vital signs for indications of disturbance. He is currently sleeping soundly.**

“You’re a pal, Jarvis.” He hesitates. “Do you have any particular… um… ethical codes you have to conform to?”

**I was designed by Mr. Stark, sir. A certain moral flexibility is imperative for my sanity as well as his own.**

Did the computer just make a joke at him? Steve frowns, thinking. This is a can of worms he’s really not sure he wants to open. And if Bucky was up, he’d definitely be telling him that this is a horrible, _horrible_ idea and that he should just go back to bed. Probably nothing will even come of it. Probably what he’s looking for isn’t there to be found and he’s risking a place on Nick Fury’s shit list for nothing. But if there is…

“Jarvis,” he says, “have you ever thought about hacking into S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

**Indeed, sir. Mr. Stark, in fact, did so shortly before the Battle of New York, before your recruitment to the Avengers Initiative. Director Fury is unaware that my mainframe retained a copy of the files. Would you like to search for a particular piece of information?**

Steve frowns. “Just like that? I realize how this is gonna sound, but that information was classified for a reason.”

**I am permitted a relaxation of normal security clearances for you in particular, sir. Mr. Stark felt it could be vital to the success of the Avengers Initiative to provide you with any and all relevant information upon request.**

So Tony has already basically OK'd his snooping around. Because he’s Captain America, probably, Steve thinks, and can’t even sort out how much of that thought is factual and how much is bitterness. “Can you show me any records relating to… let’s say, my condition when I was found in the ice, and anything about programs to recreate Dr. Erskine’s serum, like the one Bruce was working on before the Hulk incident?”

**The records are being downloaded to your tablet as we speak, sir.**

It still takes Steve a minute to remember that a tablet is a tiny computer, and then that he _has_ one—Tony had sent over one each for him and Bucky weeks ago; Bucky’s been gleefully filling his up with classic sci-fi and digital comic books, but he hasn’t even powered up his own. He goes and fetches it from one of the boxes of junk he packed up hastily this afternoon, flips open the cover, and lets the words swim up in front of him.

He reads for a long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PART 2! Yep, it’s happening. I’m honestly blown away by how many people liked Part 1, so thank you and please keep sending requests and prompts if you want to!
> 
> This part is longer and loosely follows Iron Man 3. Tagging Mature for now because I’m not sure if I’ll get up the guts to write anything explicit; if so, I’ll retag and warn. And please always holler if you have experience in an area where I don’t and think I am getting something wildly off base or using outdated/ inadvertently offensive language (Tony's nicknames are meant to be mildly offensive, obviously).
> 
> Shout-out to ScribeofArda, who prompted for Tony and Bucky growing closer (which is going to drive a lot of this plot, such as it is), and humorous shield fails.
> 
> [The Tumblr post for this fic is [here](http://follow-the-sun-fanfic.tumblr.com/post/146676601160/synthesis-followthesun-multifandom-archive).]


	2. Chapter 2

Pepper Potts is a charming, intelligent, thoroughly likeable woman and Bucky couldn’t possibly respect her more than he already does, and that fact is exactly what’s making him want to put his metal hand through a wall right now.

“Look, I’m not saying I have to be all up in everybody’s face,” he tells her, through clenched teeth, “but I am not going to lie about this.”

“Nobody is asking you to lie, Bucky. We’re asking you to omit some information that isn’t the focus of the press conference.”

“Which is why they invented the phrase ‘lie of omission!’”

“What’s going on?” Natasha asks, walking into the common area. Bucky and Pepper are on opposite sides of a table, with a sheaf of papers scattered between them. Natasha picks one up, glances at it, and frowns. “Don’t like the new uniform?”

“I don’t give a fuck about the uniform.” Which is a lie, because the redesigned Captain America uniform is _cool._ It’s mostly blue leather and Kevlar broken up by the occasional strip of red or white, with a white star on the chest and a detachable left sleeve he can pull off in a second when he heads into combat. Steve approved heartily, while adding some positively scathing notes about the original uniform (“tights, Bucky, if I never even _think_ about the tights again it’ll be too soon”). And as soon as he thinks of Steve, he’s livid again. “Pepper, here, is telling me I’m not allowed to talk about my personal life at the press conference tomorrow.”

“And she’s absolutely right,” Natasha says. “This country hasn’t had a Captain America for seventy years. People are going to want to know everything about you, and if you give them too much—”

“Yeah, I’m on board with not giving out my real name so my family doesn’t get targeted. But apparently _some_ people think the world isn’t ready to hear that Captain America has a boyfriend.”

Natasha glances at Pepper, and Bucky sees the look that passes between them; it’s very much a _can you believe this idiot_ look. “Bucky,” Natasha says, “this has nothing to do with your orientation. Honestly, that’s hardly even noteworthy compared to some of the things Tony’s gotten up to over the years—no offense, Pepper.”

“None taken,” Pepper says. “God knows I cleaned up enough of his messes.”

“The point is, we don’t want anyone getting curious about Steve _specifically.”_

“There, you see?” Pepper throws her pen down on the table and sits back, crossing her arms. “It’s obvious to everyone but him.”

“So it’s _Steve_ I’m supposed to be ashamed of?” Bucky demands. “What the hell? He’s the best person I’ve ever met in my life!”

“Which is why we want to protect him! Bucky, you’re about to officially take over as Captain America, which means Steve is about to be Captain America’s boyfriend. That would put him in enough danger already—do you realize that there aren’t many places I can go without a bodyguard because of my relationship with Tony?—but Steve is at twice the risk, because if his face gets splashed all over the media, I guarantee someone, somewhere, will figure out that he used to be Captain America, too. There’s a reason S.H.I.E.L.D. didn’t tell anyone when they found him in the Arctic. Steve could still have some living enemies from World War II, and maybe even children of those enemies who are holding onto vendettas. If he were still a super-soldier, it would be one thing, but now he has no enhanced reflexes, no healing factor, and a host of preexisting conditions. If someone shoots him, he will _die._ Do you understand now?”

Bucky is dumbstruck. “What you’re saying,” he finally replies, “is that if anybody connects Steve to me when I’m doing the Captain America thing, I’ll be painting a target on his chest.”

“Precisely. It’s safest if you don’t even confirm that you’re in a relationship. That way, even if your identity were to leak, he’d still be safe.” Pepper sighs, and Bucky knows that putting up with Tony Stark has given her a pretty good poker face, so if she’s letting her frustration show, it’s because she wants him to realize he’s been a grade-A jerk. Which he has. This is about protecting Steve, and so help him, that’s his top priority from here on out.

“What exactly are you releasing to the press?” Natasha asks, turning smoothly to Pepper to give him time to get his face under control.

“We’ll release Bucky’s service records with any identifying information redacted. We want to respect Steve’s legacy, and choosing a decorated war vet for this role should help smooth over any ruffled feathers. We also have government clearance to talk about the prosthetic, since the program’s been discontinued. If we spin it right, I think we can use it to call attention to veterans’ issues. But that’s up to Bucky, of course.”

Bucky sighs. “Just try to do it tastefully, would you? I don’t want to see Tony using my name for promoting his own biotech. I… huh.”

“What?”

Bucky has turned to look at the door to the stairwell. “Thought somebody was coming in. Okay, Pep, I’m sorry I hit the roof, it’s just… Jeez. How the fuck am I gonna explain all this to Steve?”

“He’s a smart man,” says Natasha, who’s also turned toward the door, with an unreadable look on her face. “He knows what’s involved in carrying that shield. He’ll understand.”

Steve, on the other side of the door, nods his head, although none of them can see him. He understands completely.

 

“I need to talk to you,” Steve says, walking into the science lab.

“Steve!” Bruce Banner looks up, smiles, and runs a hand through his hair. Whatever brand of science he’s doing today, it’s not the labcoat-and-safety-glasses kind today, it’s the jeans-and-sweatshirt kind; he’s been writing formulas all over a whiteboard, although Steve has no doubt that Jarvis is making a digital backup. He looks relaxed, happy. “What’s going on?”

“I think you can help me with something.” Steve takes a breath. Bruce isn’t as tall as Bucky, and he’s the opposite of intimidating in his normal body; there’s no reason he should be nervous about this. “I understand Stark got a sample of my blood.”

Bruce frowns at him. “Maybe? S.H.I.E.L.D. probably took quite a few when they revived you from cryogenesis. It’s a pretty serious ethical breach if they gave one to Tony without your consent, though.”

“Not Tony,” Steve says, “Howard. And not from when they unfroze me. From 1943. Bruce, I want you to put it back in.”

Steve sees the exact moment that Bruce realizes the implications. He sits down heavily on a nearby chair, rubbing a hand over his face. “No one else has ever been able to reproduce Erskine’s serum,” he says, “from your blood samples or otherwise. In theory, though… In _theory,_ if the reason no one succeeded was that the serum tied itself to your DNA…”

“Then maybe you put it back in my body and it replicates,” Steve says. Bucky makes him watch a lot of science fiction—well, he doesn’t _make_ him, but it’s harder for Steve to get excited about it when science briefly made him a superhero and then let him down again. (Not to mention that he has to keep making Bucky pause the films to explain whether things are based on real future-science or just plain made up; he’s still not sure if the one with the cloned dinosaurs is remotely plausible or if Bucky just really, really wants it to be.) But at least he’s gained a passing familiarity with what Bucky calls “science-bro talk.”

“In theory,” Bruce repeats, “but not in practice, Steve. If there was a blood sample, even if it had been prepared for long-term storage and frozen, it would be completely degraded by now. Ten years is pretty much the maximum. Seventy… no, I’m sorry, but it’s impossible.”

“It’s my own blood. It couldn’t hurt to try it.”

Bruce laughs in the very particular way he does with Tony sometimes. It’s a wary kind of laugh. “Oh, yes it could. Not only would it not restore your, uh, superpowers, a contaminated sample would have a decent chance of killing you. I’m sorry, Steve, but even if I was willing to let you take your chances, which I’m not, I wouldn’t do that to Bucky.”

Steve cringes at that. But it’s okay, he reminds himself; that was only his first idea. “What about a suit?” he asks. “Like Tony’s. He’s built a couple of them, I understand. Gave one to his friend Colonel Rhodes.”

“You ever ride a motorcycle?” Bruce asks.

It’s a non sequitur, but hanging around Tony has gotten Steve in the habit of rolling with those. “Only through the second half of World War II.”

“Ever knock the bike over, have to pick it back up?”

Is Bruce kidding? He used to be able to pick up a motorcycle and _throw_ —oh, right. “You’re saying the suits require physical strength to operate.”

“More than you’d expect. Tony makes improvements with every model, but there’s only so far he can go with lightweight materials before the suit becomes unsafe. Steve, can I ask where this is coming from?”

Steve looks at Bruce and sighs. “The rest of you,” he says, “when I send you out into the field to fight, I know you’re more than willing to lay down your lives. I got no right to do any less than that.”

“No, no, no. You have every right. You don’t send your tactical planner into the thick of the fight. We’ve already got,” Bruce’s smile is a little tight, “plenty of muscle in the field. We need you to give us the distance view, tell us how to hit the enemy’s weak points. The rest of us can fight the battles, but you have an instinct about how to finish them.”

“That’s a nice thought, but it doesn’t hold water, Bruce. I was always best at boots-on-the-ground work. Going into battle with my team was—”

“Are you regretting giving the shield to Bucky?”

Steve’s expression must give everything away, because Bruce shakes his head. “I’m sorry. I had no right to ask that.”

“You’re a friend, Bruce. You have every right to call me out if you think I’m in the wrong.” And Steve isn’t about to shy away from the question just because it’s hard, either. “I guess I am, but not for the reason you’d think.”

“I’d think you were worried about him getting hurt.”

“Not really. I mean, yes, of course I’m worried, but it’s not my call. He chose to be a soldier, and I have to respect that. It’s because… Bruce, Bucky was in the military under Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. Do you have any idea what it meant to him when they changed it? I never thought that being Captain America would put him back in a position where he had to compromise his principles. If anyone’s going to make sacrifices to carry that shield, it should be me.”

Bruce fluffs his hair again. Some of it is sticking up, and he’ll probably never notice. He looks a little lost, and a little sad, but neither of those is particularly unusual for Bruce. “You know, Tony calls what we’ve got—his arc reactor and my… other guy—a terrible privilege. I didn’t understand what he meant by that at first, but I think I do now. When something takes a swing at one of us, threatens something we care about? We can swing back. It must be the hardest thing in the world to have that and lose it.”

“Gee, thanks, Bruce.”

“Sorry,” Bruce says. “I’m really not the right kind of doctor for this. But I think you need to accept that you can’t carry this for Bucky. Like you said, he wouldn’t be getting into this if he couldn’t handle it. Just let him know you’re in his corner.”

It’s clear to Steve that Bruce is missing the point completely. “Sorry I wasted your time,” he says, standing up. “I appreciate your hearing me out.”

“Steve, I’ll listen any time you want to talk, but you should really discuss this with a professional who can help you sort through your feelings.”

 _No need,_ Steve thinks. He knows exactly how he feels about this. But he says, “I’ll take it under advisement,” and shakes Bruce’s hand before he walks out of the lab, squaring his shoulders as he does.

It’s not going to be as easy as he hoped, but Steve didn’t get the serum in 1943 by giving up easily. There’s a way to get it back. He just hasn’t found it yet.

 

“How bad is it?” Bucky asks Natasha. They’re backstage of the press conference, and he’s already taken all the anxiety meds he can get away with, and it isn’t enough. Sure, “only a hundred people” sounded reasonable when Pepper said it, but peeking out at a room full of reporters and camera crews is a whole different thing. “Does it look really bad? Because it’s, you know, a little _tighter_ than I expected.”

“You look fantastic. Besides, after they see your thighs in that outfit, no one’s going to be making comments about my so-called catsuit anymore.”

Bucky forces a smile. Stark ate up his moment in front of the press, and Clint seriously cheated by showing a photo of his one-eyed rescue dog for instant crowd sympathy points, but Natasha is currently winning the Best Press Conference pool after verbally dismantling an idiot who had the nerve to ask her a question about her outfit instead of her fighting skills. Unfortunately, since Thor’s not on the planet and everybody agrees that Bruce should stay out of rooms where people shout questions at him, Bucky really is out of excuses to not take his turn. If all he had to talk about was fighting aliens, this would be easy, but no, they insist on hearing about the Avengers as _people._ “What if I screw up?” he asks.

“Then I imagine we’ll kick you off the team, Steve will dump you, and you’ll have to go back to your terrible data entry job.” She smiles, and gives his ass a friendly pat. “Stop worrying. You’re going to knock them dead.”

“See, that’s the kind of wording I feel like ex-snipers and assassins should stay away from.”

“All right, Pepper’s publicist is winding down. Mics live in in three… two…” Natasha reaches up and flicks on the little microphone on his collar.

Oh, fuck. It’s really happening. Bucky takes a deep breath, wonders if his breathing is audible on the mic, tries to stop, and remembers why that doesn’t work. He shuts his eyes, feeling a swell of panic, until Natasha elbows him in the ribs and points to the wings on the other side of the stage.

Steve is standing opposite him, leaning against a support beam and grinning. He gives Bucky a thumbs up, then uncrosses his arms to reveal the T-shirt he’s wearing: his own shield silk-screened across the chest, underneath the words **Captain America Fan Club.**

Bucky smothers a laugh so poorly that Natasha pokes him again—damn, the woman has some bony elbows. He loops the shield over his arm to free his hands and shoots back a quick _I love you_ in ASL, even though he’s sure Natasha is rolling her eyes so hard that they could pop out of her head at any moment. And apparently Steve has learned that much from Clint, because he holds up his hands in a little heart shape in response.

 _Jesus, punk, don’t make a guy cry right before he’s about to go on national TV or anything._ But then Pepper says, “And now, ladies and gentlemen, the Avengers are proud to introduce the new Captain America,” and Natasha shoves him out onto the stage before he can think about it.

He does what he’s supposed to do, which is hold the shield out from his body a little and cross the stage to let everybody get a good look at the new outfit, then take a place next to Pepper at the podium. It’s not until the noise dies down that he realizes most of them were  _applauding._ “Um,” he says, “hi,” and then, abruptly, he realizes he’s been concentrating so hard on getting across the stage without falling down or something that he has no idea what he’s supposed to do next. Was there supposed to be a speech on the teleprompter or something? “I’ll take a few questions,” he says instead, and points at random to one of the reporters who’s waving her hand.

“Were you really a captain before the Chitauri invasion?” she asks.

“Uh, no,” Bucky says, “it was kind of a battlefield promotion,” which gets a few chuckles from the room. He points to another one.

“Captain, how do you think Steve Rogers would feel about a stranger carrying on his legacy?”

Ha! Stranger. That’s a good one. “I think he’d be glad to see someone stepping into the role who shares his values,” Bucky says. “I come from a military family just like he did, and I have so much respect for his courage and the way he was always standing up against oppression. And, personally? I think he’d be happy the job went to another kid from Brooklyn.”

That gets a smattering of applause, and he’s actually dumb enough to think the room is warming up to him, so of course, the question after that is the first hardball. “Captain, why should the American people trust you to keep them safe?”

“They shouldn’t,” he says. He feels Pepper stiffen beside him, and finishes, “They should trust the government and S.H.I.E.L.D. to make the right calls and the Avengers to enforce them. When I was in the army, I always saw myself as part of a team. I still do. I’m not doing this as some kind of vigilante. But I will personally do whatever I can to protect the people of the United States,” he finishes, and Pepper relaxes fractionally.

“Tell us about the metal arm!”

Jeez. Bucky didn’t even call on that guy, he just took it upon himself to yell out the question. “Uh, well. I lost my arm after a firefight in Afghanistan, and I was part of a program to test a new kind of prosthetic. You should have a lot of information about it in the press kit, but the questions I get asked most are, does it hurt?, which, no, it doesn’t, and can it do everything a regular arm can do?, which, yes. It’s as good as my real arm was—in some ways, it’s better.”

“How does your wife feel about it?”

Yikes. It’s the same guy, and he hopes Pepper’s going to figure out a way to rescind his press pass after this, because he obviously has no brain-to-mouth filter. He holds up the arm, the back of the metal hand facing the cameras, and says, “I don’t see a ring, do you?”

There’s another ripple through the room—mostly mercy laughs, he thinks—before the same fucking guy says, “What about your girlfriend?”, which is accompanied by a more genuine round of laughter. And finally, hallelujah, Bucky has a reason to smile back at this asshole.

“What makes you think it would be a _girl_ friend?” he asks, and the room explodes.

 

“I don’t know why you were worried about me,” Bucky says later that night, when they’re lying in bed together, watching one of the late shows dissect what they’re calling ‘Cap’s coming-out speech’—since they don’t know that Bucky himself has been out for years. “Pepper told me not to call attention to you. She never told me I had to stay in the closet.”

“I guess not, but S.H.I.E.L.D. isn’t going to be pleased that you didn’t warn them first.”

“Well, you see, I’ve been studying up on this Steve Rogers guy, and he was sort of a genius at following the letter of the law while completely violating the spirit of it. Besides, I got what I wanted. I got you,” Bucky throws his right arm around Steve’s thin shoulders and squeezes, “and I got the Best Avengers Press Conference trophy, which, who knew Tony would actually make a trophy? I swear, that guy runs a Fortune 100 company, fights crime in a robot suit, and still somehow has too much time on his hands. Anyway, I bet they won’t let me back on TV for a _long_ time, which is good, because being in front of all those people was exhausting. My brain’s kind of stuck in a loop, you know?”

“Yeah, you seem just a tiny bit tense. Turn over.” Bucky does, and Steve straddles him, kneading his fingers into the muscles of his back. “How’s this?”

Bucky answers with a groan of pleasure. “Where did you learn how to do that?”

“Switzerland, 1944.”

“Do my shoulders and I’ll be your slave forever.”

Steve slides his hands up, but he stops at the seam where the metal meets scar tissue. “You know, you did end up lying today. You said the arm doesn’t hurt you anymore.”

“Aw, I hope you're not doing your disappointed Cap face at me right now. The arm doesn’t hurt. What hurts is the drag on my spine. You know, when I first got this thing, I ripped a door off a car with it once, just to see if I could do it. And I could, but then all of a sudden I was holding a car door and I wasn’t braced right, and I threw my back out and couldn’t move for a week.”

“So if you could have your old arm back, would you?”

“What, you mean, like, with magic or something?”

Magic is actually one thing Steve hasn’t considered yet. He mentally adds it to his list. “Yeah, let’s say one of Thor’s friends could magic you up a new arm. Would you take it?”

“Is it bothering you?” Bucky asks, twisting around to look at him. “God, you’ve been so great about it, but I know it’s noisy and weird and… you know, I bet Stark could make a sleeve for it out of silicone or something for when I’m not fighting—”

“Don’t be stupid,” Steve says. “I hate that it hurts you, but it doesn’t _bother_ me. Except for that one time when you’d been holding that beer bottle and your fingers were literally freezing when you put them on the back of my neck. And you laughed when I screamed.”

“In my defense, it was really funny.”

“Sure, if you’re a jerk.”

“I don’t know why you’d think I’m not. And yeah, punk, sure, if I could go back in time and not lose my arm or something, of course I would. Unless it was going to be one of those monkey’s-paw things where history would be all different and I’d never meet you, because that would suck.”

“That’s not monkey’s paw so much as butterfly effect.” Steve stops and looks at him. “Oh, no. You’re turning me into a nerd, just like you.”

“And here I thought today couldn’t get any better.”

“What if it wasn’t as easy as magic, though? What if it was risky? Would you still do it?”

“Stevie, this is really sweet, but stop fussing over me. This arm is fine. Jesus, and people say _I’m_ a mother hen. Hey, what’s up with the TV?”

Steve looks up. The audio is hissing static, and the signal has gone to some kind of blinking test pattern, colored bars overlaid with a ring of black circles. Then the picture changes, and Steve says, “Buck, something weird is going on. I think maybe you better see this.”

“Huh?” Bucky sits up, and together, both of them take their first look at the man who, fifteen minutes from now, the entire world will know as the Mandarin.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Imagine the episode of The Colbert Report that aired that night... that is all.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I wasn’t going to post another chapter until I had the boys’ situation resolved, but you know what? The new Civil War trailer just killed me, so SCREW IT, SHARE MY PAIN.

Tony glowers at Clint when he walks into the Avengers common room fifteen minutes later than everyone else, out of uniform in a purple T-shirt and jeans and holding a Starbucks cup. “Are you kidding me, Barton?” he says, flipping open the face plate on whatever the latest Iron Man armor is—Bucky can’t remember if it’s Mark 11 or Mark 12. “We got a terrorist blowing up buildings on the evening news and you stopped for coffee? Am I the only one who takes Avenging seriously?”

“Aw, Stark. Do you know what time it is?” Clint yawns. “Look, I’ve been on a lot of S.H.I.E.L.D. ops. It’ll be a couple hours before they deploy us. Natasha, tell them about Wollongong.”

“That’s a fair point,” Natasha agrees. “That time, they had us on standby for three days before they sent us in. In fact, you might be better off skipping the coffee and catching a nap on the Quinjet.”

“Gotta find somebody to watch Lucky first.” Clint flops on the nearest couch, pulling his cell phone out of his back pocket.

“S.H.I.E.L.D. is taking their sweet time finding this asshole,” Tony agrees. “Jarvis, put a trace on the Mandarin’s broadcast signal. Let’s see if we can help our friends over at—”

“Belay that order,” says a new voice, and all of them turn. The elevator doors have just opened, and Nick Fury crosses the room in a few long strides, stopping in front of Bucky. “Captain,” he says dryly. “Interesting press conference today.”

Bucky can’t tell if that’s approval or disapproval, so he just inclines his head. “Sir. Are you here with orders?”

“Yes, and I can give them to you in two words. Stand. Down.”

“Sir!” Bucky’s the closest, and he figures being Captain America must count for something, even if he’s only had the job officially for about six hours now, so he goes for it. “We have a confirmed terrorist attack on a U.S. Army base in Germany—”

“—Which is not the same as American soil, as I’m sure you know, soldier. Besides which, the World Security Council ordered that the Avengers are to be deployed only for extraordinary threats. The President believes this Mandarin is not an extraordinary threat.”

“We live in a world where terrorist bombings are _ordinary threats?”_ Steve says.

“No magic, no aliens? Trust me,” says Clint, “hang around S.H.I.E.L.D. a while and you’ll be amazed how ordinary this seems.”

“Stop helping, Barton. And, Stark, don’t even think about hacking into the S.H.I.E.L.D. servers again. We had to rebuild the entire network when you breached security on the last system, so stay out of this one.” Fury gives them all one more good glare with his single eye, then gets back on the elevator, and the doors shut behind him.

They’re all quiet for a moment, and then Bucky says, “So, Fury doesn’t like this any more than we do.”

“Couldn’t agree more, Cap. He practically begged us to take this guy out. Jarvis,” Tony says, “belay the belay, we’re going to—”

“Tony, wait,” Bucky says. “I didn’t mean that was a reverse psychology thing. I’m pretty sure he’s telling us we pissed off the World Security Council and we have to play it safe for a while.”

“Oh, you mean they’re still put out that I stopped them from nuking Manhattan?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, careful not to roll his eyes. No one’s forgotten that Tony did some epic-level heroics there; he doesn’t have to keep making sure. “That’s exactly what I mean. We embarrassed them once, and if we do it again, they could disband the Avengers. Besides, I just went on TV and told everybody I don’t intend to be a vigilante. This doesn’t change that.”

Steve says, very quietly, “People died today, Bucky.”

“I know. It’s awful. But if we go charging in on our own and try to tackle this Mandarin alone, we could all die too, and I’m not letting that happen.”

“I’m sorry, but who made Mr. Roboto the leader?” Tony says. “Because last time I checked, that one,” he points to Steve, “was the leader.”

“Tony’s right,” Steve agrees. “The thing to do here is to bring the Mandarin to justice before he hurts anyone else.”

“In a perfect world sure, but we’re not in a perfect world, Steve. This is a dangerous op, and without S.H.I.E.L.D.’s intel, we won’t know what we’re walking into. And what about the next threat that the Avengers aren’t here to face because we all got ourselves killed fighting this guy without backup?”

“We have backup,” Tony says, looking meaningfully at Banner.

“Tony, I’m not sure that’s a good idea—” Bruce begins, but Bucky motions for him to stop.

“I say we put it to a vote, right now. Defy S.H.I.E.L.D. orders and go after the Mandarin, or stay out of it until Fury officially sends us in?”

“Fine,” Steve says. “All in favor of stopping the Mandarin before he can murder any more innocent people?” His hand and Tony’s go up. “All opposed?”

Bucky raises his hand, and it’s no surprise to him when Clint and Natasha both add their votes to his; the two of them have been S.H.I.E.L.D. longer than anybody. Bruce is more hesitant, but finally, his hand goes up as well. There’s a short silence, and Tony breaks it. “Fine. This one isn’t personal. We’ll leave this Mandarin character to the tender mercies of the President’s response team, if he has one.”

“Thanks, Tony,” Bucky says, before he realizes he should’ve kept his mouth shut. He can _feel_ Steve seething behind him.

Once it’s apparent that nothing else mission-related is going to happen tonight, Clint gets up from the couch, muttering about the likelihood of getting a ride back to Bed-Stuy at this hour, and leaves with Natasha; Tony wanders off, grabbing a bottle of Scotch from the bar as he goes; and Bruce heads off in the direction of the lab, although to Bucky’s surprise, he catches his eye first and signs, _We should talk soon,_ before he makes his exit.

Steve waits until the door clicks shut behind Bruce before he turns, and Bucky’s breath catches. It doesn’t matter that Steve’s half a foot shorter than him, or that Bucky can count his fucking ribs when he takes his shirt off—when that blaze of anger flares up in his eyes, he’s more Captain America than Bucky will ever be. “I can’t believe you,” he says. “The Mandarin is _killing innocent people._ How can you expect us to stand aside?”

“Steve, this one isn’t as easy as marching in and punching the guy in the face. Assuming we even find the Mandarin’s hideout without S.H.I.E.L.D.’s satellites, we have to assume his people have tech, bombs, guerrilla training—”

“Tony agrees with me, and we never agree on anything.”

“Tony’s fucked up over that alien wormhole business and drowning his problems in booze. He only jumped at this because he wants to feel in control of something.”

“So, what, you think that’s my motivation, too? Feeling in control?”

“No, I know your heart’s in the right place, but your brain sure as hell isn’t! Have you ever fought insurgents in caves, Steve?”

“No, only a Hydra prison camp full of guards with laser guns. I defied orders to do that, and the four hundred men whose lives I saved weren’t complaining.”

“Right,” Bucky says, “you got to be the guy who swooped in for the heroic rescue. Well, I was the guy on the ground who needed rescuing, Steve, and considering I lost my arm because I didn’t get it, you better believe I have a damn good reason if I think we should stay out of it.”

“Yeah, you lost your arm,” Steve says, his voice dangerously low, “and all I lost was my whole goddamn life. I lost the body they gave me, I lost Peggy, and I lost seventy years because I was doing the right thing no matter what the cost, so don’t you _dare_ talk to me about sacrifice.”

The words hit Bucky like a roundhouse punch. “You’re bringing Peggy into this?” he says.

“Damn right I am. She backed my play at Azzano, when it counted most—”

“—And all I’m trying to do is save all of _our_ lives, but I guess that doesn’t measure up to the woman who was willing to let you throw yours away seventy years ago!”

“You don’t get to talk about her like that. You don’t _ever_ get to talk about her like that.”

Bucky clenches his left hand into a fist, and the sound of the metal plates clanking and locking is what does it, honestly. It’s more than he can handle. “Fine,” he says, “we don’t have to talk at all,” and he storms off toward the stairwell.

“Goddammit, Bucky, don’t you walk away from me,” Steve shouts after him, but Bucky’s already throwing the door open so hard that it’s a minor miracle—or a testament to excellent Hulk-proofing—that his left hand doesn’t rip it off its hinges. He stomps up the stairs, for once actually glad that more than one flight is murder on Steve’s asthma, and when he reaches their apartment, he grabs a duffel bag from a shelf in the closet, throws in his toothbrush and razor and enough clothes and meds for a couple days, and takes his keys from the hook by the door. He half expects Steve to be in the elevator when the doors open, ready to go another round, but nobody tries to stop him as he pushes the button for the garage.

Nobody tries to stop him when his motorcycle’s engine roars to life, either. He pulls out of the Avengers Tower garage and points his wheels toward Brooklyn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Many thanks to the gaping plot hole in IM3 (why didn’t the Avengers go after the Mandarin / why didn’t Tony call them for backup when he did?) for inspiring this chapter.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Everybody in this fandom is down with angst, right?

Sam never thought he’d say this, but he’s starting to regret giving Captain America a house key.

Bucky has a very specific method for dealing with breakups. He won’t say that’s what this is, yet, but he’s obviously thinking it; when he filled Sam in on the details of his fight with Steve, he admitted that he couldn’t see a way forward from this one. So he’s in breakup mode, which usually follows a well-defined pattern:

  * Step 1: Stop shaving, and forget any clothes that aren’t T-shirts and sweatpants. (Sam draws a hard line against some items that have previously been part of Step 1, such as, “stop eating,” “stop taking meds,” and most of all, “stop showering,” but the first two get a pass.)
  * Step 2: Lie on the couch for hours at a stretch, listening to the saddest music available.
  * Step 3: Beer and video games.
  * Step 4: The gym, for catharsis through punching.
  * Step 5: Shut up, Sam, I’m not crying.
  * Step 6: Improbable solution-seeking, or the “maybe I should quit my job and move to New Zealand and raise sheep” phase.
  * Step 7: Recovery.



Sam has never seen Bucky get stuck in Step 2 for so long before, and given that it’s holding up the only part of this process he remotely enjoys, it’s getting pretty damned annoying. “Are you still listening to Adele?” he says, when he walks into the living room on Saturday morning, almost two full weeks after the blowup.

Bucky doesn’t lift his face from the couch cushions when he mutters, “Fuck you, Sam, you love Adele.”

“Of course I do, man, everybody loves Adele. The problem is the _still_ part.”

“Everybody heals at their own pace and it’s okay to accept where you’re at in the process.”

“Are you actually throwing therapy language back at me?”

“Yeah, sure, why not? I’m practicing self-care.”

“No, what you’re doing is the opposite of that.” Bucky ignores him, and Sam sighs. “Okay, B. You wanna keep crashing on my couch, you’re gonna do something for me. Take a shower, lose the stubble—seriously, man, what are you thinking? It looks terrible—and put on some halfway decent clothes. We’re going out.”

“Sam, I really don’t feel like it right now.”

“I’ll buy you one of those horrifying coffee drinks you like.”

Bucky raises his head. “Three-shot two-pump white chocolate mocha with extra whip?”

“Whatever.”

“And a scone.”

“Fine.”

“With blueberries.”

“Barnes, now you’re just being an asshole.”

 

Steve doesn’t know how to interact with the people at the S.H.I.E.L.D. headquarters in midtown, which is funny, because it’s the one place in the world, aside from the upper floors of Avengers Tower, where everyone knows who he really is.

He hasn’t been here since a couple of weeks after they woke him up from the ice. He hasn’t walked in here voluntarily… well, ever. And yet, the security guard inspects his ID card and ushers him through the metal detector without commentary. The only time she looks surprised is when she tells him she’ll have someone come to take him to Director Fury’s office, and he tells her that he’s not here to see Fury. When he tells her who he does want to see, she says, “Who?”

“Dr. Jemma Simmons,” he repeats. “She’s a biochemist.”

“All right, that lab is two floors down,” the guard says, and Steve doesn’t tell her that he knows that already. The lab downstairs is where he woke up after seventy years on ice; it’s where he got around the blatantly fake WAC nurse by being quicker on the uptake than she expected, and slid past everyone who tried to stop him by being too small and slippery to get caught. As harrowing as that was—it took him days to really come to grips with the fact that he really was in the wrong century as well as the wrong body, and that this wasn’t a nightmare he’d eventually wake up from—in a weird way, it was almost comforting that at least one thing was just like old times.

Jemma is at a lab table, using a pipette to move something into a petri dish. When she sees him, she pulls off her safety glasses and smiles. “Steven! What a pleasant surprise.”

“It’s nice to have someone who’s happy to see me,” he tells her, smiling. “Even if it’s only because I’m medically interesting.”

She knows it’s a joke, but she says seriously, “You’re very interesting. Come and sit down. Can I get you anything? Tea, coffee, juice?”

He’s about to say _coffee_ when he remembers that he doesn’t actually like it; he likes kissing Bucky, who usually tastes like it. “Tea would be great. …Should that be happening?”

Jemma glances at the petri dish. A moment ago it contained a thin layer of pale pink goo; now the goo is bright orange, bubbling, and violently overflowing its container. She makes a little _tsk_ noise, crosses to the opposite wall, takes a fire extinguisher out of its cradle, and hits the dish with a spray of foam. “There,” she says cheerfully, “completely inert. Now, how do you take your tea?”

And people wonder why he didn’t want to stay on at S.H.I.E.L.D. He shakes his head and follows her out.

 

“So tell me what the fight was really about,” Sam says, when they’ve settled in at their table.

“I did tell you, Sam.” Bucky stares down at the plate with the scone on it and scuffs the toe of his sneaker across the floor. “I’m never going to be as good as my boyfriend’s dead girlfriend. I can’t live like that. Case closed.”

“I call bullshit.”

“What?”

“You’re not jealous of Peggy Carter. You told me you would’ve hit on her yourself if you’d been alive in 1944.” Bucky snorts. “Besides, Steve’s had one girlfriend in his life; you’ve had, what, six or seven relationships you were pretty serious about? You’re not that much of a hypocrite, B. I don’t think the Peggy business was your reason; I think it was your excuse. So what’s the real problem here?”

“I...” Bucky slumps. “Sam, why you gotta be so fuckin’ perceptive?”

An elderly woman at the next table over audibly sighs at Bucky’s language; Sam offers her an apologetic smile before he turns back to Bucky. “Sometimes I wish I wasn’t. It means I have to help morons like you.”

“Yeah, maybe both of us just care too much.”

“What?”

“Nothing, I just… God, my coffee is taking forever.”

“You’re the one who wanted the drink it takes five minutes just to order, _James.”_

“Yeah, you call yourself Bucky next time and see how wrong they get it on the cup.”

“Stop trying to avoid this conversation. I’m not letting you leave until you tell me what’s really going on.”

“Okay. You want the truth?” Bucky looks up, and—well, it’s not that Sam didn’t realize he was sad, but there’s something more in those blue eyes than the usual post-breakup self-pity. The word, Sam thinks, is _heartbroken._ “The thing is, I—”

That’s when the alarm on Bucky’s Starkphone blares so loudly that everyone in the place turns to look at him.

“Sorry, sorry! Fuck! Sorry! Oh, shit,” he says, when the woman at the next table moves from intermittent glares to the full stink-eye, “sorry I said fuck, I mean—” Bucky dives for the mute button, then groans. “I gotta go, Sam.”

“No way. You’re not getting out of it that—” Sam looks at the phone screen, which is bright red with white flashing letters reading **AVENGERS ASSEMBLE**. Bucky taps it, and the message vanishes, replaced by a photo. “Is that Turtle Bay?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay. I’ll give you this one, B., but you’re not off the hook. Next time I see you, we are _talking_ about this!” he shouts, but Bucky is already on his way out the door.

“James?” the barista calls fifteen seconds later, holding up a ridiculously large coffee cup, and Sam sighs and walks up to the counter. Fine. He’s drinking Bucky’s stupid coffee, then. He’s earned it.

“So what’s wrong?” Jemma says, while the tea is steeping.

“What makes you think anything’s wrong?”

“Steve, you haven’t come to S.H.I.E.L.D. in months. You wouldn’t be here now if things were going swimmingly.” She reaches across the table and takes his hands. “How has your health been?”

“Uh. Not great.” Bucky would laugh at the understatement of that, Steve thinks; he’s been hospitalized four times since he last saw Jemma, and toughed out two more episodes where he probably should have been. “That’s part of why I’m here. You helped me a lot when I first woke up, and I was hoping you could do it again.”

“Of course. Anything you need.” And the thing about Jemma is, she means it. There’s no rule she wouldn’t bend, no S.H.I.E.L.D. regulation she couldn’t conveniently overlook if she believed she were doing the right thing. She’s like him in that regard—and that means he knows exactly which buttons to push.

“Jemma, is S.H.I.E.L.D. working on a way to give me the serum back?”

She sits up a little straighter. “What made you think of that?”

“I saw some files. The less I say about how, the better. Is it true?”

“No,” Jemma says, after a few seconds’ silence. “I’m sorry, but we’re not anymore. People have been trying to recreate Dr. Erskine’s formulas for decades without success. We hoped that with the Tesseract, and with fresh blood samples… But we couldn’t work out how to undo what was done to you. We can’t even properly explain how it was done in the first place.” His disappointment must show on his face, because she leans forward and squeezes his hands. “That’s not to say we can’t help you. I just read an article about a new asthma treatment that’s very promising in clinical trials—”

“It’s not about the asthma,” Steve says. It’s funny, he hasn’t even said it to himself yet, but once he starts, the words pour out of him. “It’s not about the anemia or the arrhythmia or the scoliosis or being half-deaf on one side. It’s not something I want to _mitigate._ I just want to help people again, and right now, I can’t, Jemma. Even if I’m out with the Avengers, I have to stay in some safe spot outside the fighting, or somebody has to take bodyguard duty. I don’t need to be Captain America again, but I need to be able to do more than this.”

Jemma stirs sugar into her tea, her face scrunched in a frown. “Surely there’s a way for you to make a difference without fighting,” she says. “I flatter myself that I’m doing that, and I’ve never done fieldwork.”

That’s the thing, though. Steve has been racking his brain for months now, and there’s nothing he knows how to do for the world _except_ fight for it. He’s a decent tactician—but Nick Fury and Maria Hill are both better. He can check Tony’s ego and keep Bruce from becoming a gun pointed in the wrong direction, keep Natasha centered and make sure Clint doesn’t try to tackle too much alone, and Bucky… well, Bucky claims he needs the previous Captain America to teach him the ropes, but Steve thinks he’s doing just fine learning how to use the shield on his own. Either way, the fact remains that no matter how well he directs and commands them, he’s not out there with them. Steve used to pride himself on the fact that he never asked one of the Howling Commandos to do something he wasn’t willing to do himself. Now that’s all he does. “So there’s no one working on the serum,” he reiterates.

“No one I’d trust to get it right, certainly.”

Steve sits up. “What?”

She realizes her mistake too late, and tries to backpedal. “I mean, no one, of course there’s no one at all who could possibly—”

Jemma Simmons is an incredibly bad liar, but to be fair, some pretty damn good liars have broken down when they realized they were fibbing to Captain America. “Jemma, I’m not asking for a miracle,” he says. “I’m just looking for some hope.”

Jemma looks at him for several moments, wide-eyed, shoulders stiff. Then she seems to decide that there’s no point in keeping up the pretense any longer. “There’s an organization we’ve been keeping an eye on for a while now,” she says. “A privately-funded think tank called Advanced Idea Mechanics. Their early work was revolutionary, and the results were a bit like the Erskine serum. But there were… concerns, and S.H.I.E.L.D. was asked to take a look. They hadn’t done anything technically illegal, so we dropped the investigation, but their founder, well… Ethically, he’s quite suspect. To be frank, I wouldn’t trust him to feed my cat, much less hack my genetic code. Steven, please promise me you won’t do anything rash.”

“What, let some scientist try their crazy experiment on me? Wouldn’t dream of it.”

“I’m not joking about this. Talk to me before you do anything.”

“All right,” he says, a little startled by her vehemence. “I will.”

“What about other things? Have you had any time to focus on your art? I know that was something you were looking forward to.”

“It’s been on the back burner.” He still hesitates to say it out loud, but Jemma is safe to confide in, if anyone is, so he makes himself say, “There’s this… guy I started dating, and we got pretty serious—”  

“Really? That’s wonderful!”

“—But I haven’t been working on anything since we broke up.”

“Oh. _Oh.”_ Jemma doesn’t hesitate; she just comes around the table and hugs him. “I’m so sorry. He was a fool to let you go.”

“Thanks for thinking so. But the truth is, it was my fault. I expected too much of him.”

“You expect too much of yourself.”

Steve gives her a tight-lipped smile. “The thing is,” he says, “I have to.”

Before she can ask him to explain, there’s a blaring alarm sound that makes them both jump. “The hell,” Steve says, and then, “Sorry,” as he fumbles for his cell phone. He taps the screen, then frowns. “I don’t know this building. Do you?”

“Yes. That’s the United Nations headquarters. Good Lord, are those—”

“Yeah, I think they are.” Steve jams the phone back in his pocket. He’s not going to forget that image any time soon. The buildings are what he still thinks of as ultra-modern, all glass and concrete, with a row of flagpoles and multicolored flags in front. They’d probably be gorgeous pieces of architecture if there weren’t about a hundred robots blocking the view. “I gotta go,” he says. “Is there any chance you could call a cab for me?”

“Steve, for the leader of the Avengers, I’m pretty sure S.H.I.E.L.D. can do something better than that.”

 

Bucky pulls up on his motorcycle in front of the Dag Hammarskjöld at about the same time as Steve is getting out of the Quinjet, and the first thing he thinks is, thank God Sam made him get dressed and shave. The second thing is that he’d forgotten how goddamn long Steve’s eyelashes are. Okay, so maybe that’s a weird thing to be fixated on, but as long as he’s looking at Steve’s eyelashes he’s _not_ looking at his mouth, where he could really get himself in trouble. His third thought is, _Fuck. Too late._

 There’s a heartbeat where it’s just the two of them standing there, and Bucky forces himself to speak first. “Hey,” he says. “How’ve you been?”

“Oh, uh. Fine. Fine, and you?”

“Fine,” Bucky replies, too quickly, just like Steve did.

Steve takes a deep breath. “Buck—”

“Thank God.” Tony swoops down out of the sky in a brand new Iron Man suit—seriously, another one?—and says, “Thought we’d have to start this party without you two. Here, Caprica Six, I swung by the tower and grabbed your gear.” The heavy vibranium shield clunks to the ground beside Bucky, followed by a duffel bag.

Well, that’s good. Clint’s told him that the other Avengers all vowed not to take sides in what Tony calls Cap vs. Cap, but Bucky wasn’t convinced that Tony wouldn’t cheat and play back Jarvis’s security tapes on the sly. If he’s being helpful, it means Jarvis’s privacy settings were as good as promised, and he doesn’t know what Bucky said about him during the fight. Tony has his good points, but a forgiving nature ain’t one of them.

There’s no time to suit up (and contrary to everything comic books ever led him to believe, there’s never a convenient phone booth around when you need one), so Bucky just yanks his shirt off, pulls on the top half of the Captain America suit, and settles the tactical glasses over his eyes. It’ll have to do. Of course Tony didn’t grab his utility belt with all the knives, his pistols, and the neat little high-tech grenade for emergencies, but this is better than nothing. He settles the shield over his right arm and says, “What’s the story here? And how did I not know that somebody had real-life killer robots? Stark, these things aren’t yours, are they?”

“I’m hurt by that, Barnes, I really am. If I ever build a killer robot, it’s going to be a hell of a lot more aesthetically pleasing than these hunks of junk. They belong to the leader of the sovereign nation of Latveria, and you,” he rubs his gauntleted hands together in glee, “are not going to _believe_ what his name is.”

“Can it, Stark.” Natasha is the next to arrive on the scene. “Thanks for joining us, boys. So, Latveria and Sokovia are having a disagreement inside, and somebody thought it would be a good idea to make a show of force at the negotiations, because _that_ can’t end badly. Clint and I have been picking off doombots on the west side of the structure, but we’ve been waiting for you before engaging them directly.”

“Doombots?” Bucky repeats.

“That’s what they’re called in Latveria.”

“I’m going to fight things called doombots? This,” Bucky says, “is the _best day ever.”_ Never mind that Steve is standing right there, but with his body carefully angled away, so they can pretend they’re not on the same planet; never mind that seeing Steve hurts more than anything since _not_ seeing Steve. Sometimes you just have to push everything else aside and find some joy in the fact that you get to punch a killer robot.

“Do we know anything about how they’re controlled?” Steve asks.

“Jarvis ran an analysis, says they’ve got limited autonomy and that there has to be a command center around here somewhere that’s giving them orders. He was scornful. It was cute.”

“Okay. Then you’re eyes in the sky, looking for anything out of place. Maybe radio antennas or satellite dishes—”

“I think I can figure out what a control module might look like, buddy.”

Steve nods, his expression wry. “Natasha, where’s Clint?”

“Roof of the General Assembly Building.”

“Hi, Team Not-Murderous-Robots,” Clint’s voice greets them over the comms.

“And Bruce?”

A howl and a smashing sound from the opposite side of the courtyard gives them their answer.

“What about civilians?” Steve asks.

“No casualties yet,” Clint says. “Most of them got out of the way and the robots didn’t pursue. But the Sokovian delegation’s inside, and the way these things are tearing up the buildings, nothing good’s gonna happen to anybody who gets in their way.”

“Thanks, pal,” says Bucky, who’s about to deliberately get in their way.

“Okay. Natasha, you’re with Tony. Both of you work on finding the control center, and when you do, work together to take it out. Clint, cover Natasha and keep picking off stragglers when you can. Bucky, it looks like the robots are close to breaking down that door,” Steve points to Clint’s building, “so get there and hold them off. Drive them toward Bruce if you can, hold out until he comes to you if you can’t.”

“Got it,” says Bucky. They seem to be in agreement that they can sort out their drama after the killer robots are taken care of. That’s… good, right?

He takes off running toward the door, and when he’s in range of the first doombot, he dives at it, slamming the vibranium shield into its midsection. Doombots, on closer inspection, are roughly humanoid silver things. For unfathomable reasons, they all have pieces of green cloth looped over their heads and shoulders. He’s _so_ glad Sam made him get up off the couch. “Guys,” he says to the open comm line, “have you seen these things? They’re wearing capes. How cold is it in Latveria that _robots_ have to wear fucking _capes?”_

“Well, I can tell you that Clint did not appreciate my theory that they dressed for the occasion of fighting Robin Hood,” Tony chimes in.

“Guys, could we try to focus here?” says Steve, sounding tired.

“Sure, Major Buzzkill. I think I’ve got a lock on the command center,” Tony says, and Bucky stops listening, because now he’s in the middle of them and he has to concentrate. The doombots are firing something not unlike Tony’s repulsor rays; he barely gets the shield up in time to avoid being knocked over by one. They’re predictably weak at the joints, though. The one he smashed in the middle hasn’t gotten up again, and he takes out another by slamming the shield into its knees, but now that he has their attention, they’re leaving the door they were trying to batter down and coming in to surround him instead.

Okay. Looks like it’s time to find out whether all those hours in the gym were worth anything. He winds up and lets the shield go, and holy shit, for once, it actually goes perfectly. _Pow—pow—pow,_ and the rim of the shield slams into three of them in sequence before it flies past on the rebound; he grabs it by the leather strap and swings it around to bash another one in the face. Some of them fall down under the force of the shield strikes, which is beautiful, because they seem to be too stupid to figure out how to get up again—they’re like turtles on their backs; he almost feels sorry for them—and some don’t, but it’s okay, because whatever they’re made of, vibranium is harder and it is _fucking them up._ Sparks fly out of the shoulder of the next one he hits, and it’s all he can do not to bust out laughing when its cape starts to smolder. “I just set a doombot on fire!” he crows over the comms.

“You need to take this seriously, Bucky!” Steve snaps.

 _And you need to get the stick out of your ass,_ Bucky almost replies, but he bites the words back because Steve is actually right. Somehow he can always tell when Bucky goes from typical Avenger wisecracking to actual distraction. Bucky focuses on the doombot in front of him instead, blocks an energy beam with the shield and then smashes it in its weirdly masklike metal face. And now they—or more likely, whoever’s programming them—must have realized that he’s fucking up their plans to get into the building, because they’re starting to group up again as if they plan to rush him all at once. _Shit._ He launches himself into the middle of the group and jumps, throwing a kick into the first one that knocks it into a couple others and scatters them like bowling pins, but the collision knocks him off balance, and he lands awkwardly on top of the shield. Before he can get up, one of the doombots is standing over him with its energy-beam-thing aimed at his chest.

“Hey, Barnes, you’re welcome,” Clint says, about the time the arrow thuds home in whatever passes for the doombot’s brain, and it goes down in a shower of sparks.

“I owe you coffee, Barton,” Bucky replies, and now he’s up again and there are still plenty of robots to fight, but he’s getting back into the swing of this. As long as he doesn’t let himself get surrounded, he’s good. And as long as the doombots are fighting him, they’re not trying to get into the building and kill the Sokovian ambassadors. He takes them on as they come at him, blocking, bashing, punching, and kicking, and his head’s in the game now, all right; he’s so focused that he almost doesn’t hear Natasha say, “Got it,” and he doesn’t realize what’s happening until some of the robots start to grind to a halt and topple over.

It’s kind of anticlimactic, really. The doombots seem to have varying degrees of backup functionality once they’re cut off from the command center; some of them he still has to disable, but others start wandering aimlessly or fall down of their own accord, like they can’t figure out what to do and eventually just give up. By the time Tony and Natasha rejoin him in the courtyard—Hulk is still off on his own, finishing off his own batch of doombots, and probably happier for not being disturbed at his work—he and Clint have taken down most of the stragglers. “Good avenging, bros,” he says, walking toward them.

“<Not so bad yourself, Barnes,>” Natasha tells him in Russian, and he smiles, partly because he likes hearing her speak it and partly because he knows it pisses off Tony to not know what’s going on.

“Is everybody okay?” Steve asks over the comms.

“Fine,” says Tony, and Clint and Natasha follow suit, leaving Bucky with no choice but to add a “Fine” of his own, even though he’d really like to start bitching about a couple of doombot-shaped bruises. “Oh, and look, we’ve got company,” Tony says, flipping open the faceplate on his armor and jutting his chin toward the edge of the lawn. “Smile pretty for the cameras, kids.”

Bucky follows his gaze, and mutters a curse under his breath. At some point during the fight, the cops showed up, and they’ve definitely developed a sensible approach to Avengers appearances: throw up some barricades to keep any noncombatants away, then stay the fuck out of it until the smashing stops. But one group of reporters has gotten around them; they’re rolling film right under an awning that looks like it got damaged by one of the doombots, and they also look like they’re totally unaware of the danger. _Civilians._ Figures.

“My job’s not done yet,” Natasha says. “Hulk will be out of robots soon, and I need to calm him down before he hurts something he’s not supposed to hurt. Can one of you handle the press?”

“Aw, press,” Clint groans.

“It’s not safe for them to be where they are,” Steve says. “We have a S.H.I.E.L.D. response team coming in to make sure all the doombots are really disabled, but we should keep civilians out of the area until they’re through. Unless journalists have gotten a lot less annoying since 1945, they’ll just get in the way.”

“I got it,” Bucky says. If Natasha can handle the Hulk, he guesses it’s the least he can do. He jogs toward the little group of reporters—an anchorwoman, a camera guy and a couple of techs—and calls, “Hey, it’s really not safe for you to be here.”

Unfortunately, Steve has a point: journalists are still journalists, and he’s just inadvertently given them an exclusive. “Captain America,” the woman says, in a perky _I’m-on-TV_ kind of voice. He even recognizes her; she’s the one who looks weirdly like Maria Hill. “What can you tell us about what happened here today?”

 _Ha! Not gonna be that easy, lady._ “No comment,” he says. “And, hey, it’s really unsafe for you to be this close to the combat area. We gotta ask you to move back that way about fifty yards, okay?”

“Captain, can you confirm that Latveria was behind these attacks?”

Jesus, this woman’s like a terrier. “Ma’am, you’re not getting any comments out of me until you get behind the barricades,” he’s saying, when all of a sudden he hears Tony say, _“Fuck!”_ in his earpiece.

That’s sufficiently unlike Mr. Always In the Public Eye that Bucky turns. Tony is in flight, zipping toward the top of the building they’re next to, and Bucky’s eyes follow Tony’s line of sight to the roof, where one of the doombots is poised at the edge. It doesn’t look that unlike the others, except that its torso is wider, maybe heavier, but its eyes are flashing with a blazing green light, and Bucky knows what that rapid blink means because he’s seen it before.

The doombot is a bomb about to blow.

“Get _back!”_ he shouts at the anchorwoman, who’s nearest the building, and grabs her arm. He shoves her behind him with the other three, knowing as he does that they’re all sitting ducks, soft slow noncombatants who have no idea of the danger they’re in. _Please let this be enough,_ is all he has time to think, and he puts his shield and himself between them and the building just as the bomb detonates.

Bucky doesn’t see Tony get thrown backward by the blast, then catch himself in the air with the repulsors and shoot down toward the lawn; he doesn’t hear Steve scream, “Bucky!” from the safety of the Quinjet. For a minute he can’t see, or hear, anything, and then the sound fades back in through the ringing in his ears, and the cloud of gray concrete dust starts to clear, and he thinks _alive,_ he thinks _okay,_ he tries to get up and he can’t, and he doesn’t know why.

A few seconds later, he works out that it probably has something to do with the chunk of concrete that’s pressing down on his chest.

 

On some level, Steve Rogers knows that he doesn’t think about danger the way normal people do. He doesn’t know whether that’s actually something heroic in him or just a complete lack of common sense—Peggy thought it was one of those things, and Bucky thinks it’s the other—but when he sees the explosion rain down concrete and sheetrock and realizes that Bucky is there, holding up the shield with his metal arm as if he can stop the whole blast himself, it never crosses Steve’s mind to stay in the Quinjet.

Clint is filling what’s left of the doombot with arrows and Natasha is yelling for a medic over the S.H.I.E.L.D. comms when Steve gets to where Bucky is lying, with his back on the ground and a chunk of the building on top of him. Stark swoops down beside him in the suit, and Steve grabs one side of the concrete slab and says, “Help me.” He’s aware that you’re supposed to leave tasks like this for the experts, in case the pressure on an artery somewhere is the only thing that’s keeping him from bleeding out, but the weight is keeping Bucky’s chest from expanding, and not breathing gets deadly even faster than blood loss does.

Tony is muttering something vaguely medical-sounding at Jarvis, quickly; whatever answer comes back must be positive, because he helps Steve lift the concrete. Bucky sucks in a breath with a sound like rusty hinges as soon as the weight comes off him, but Steve knows a little about how lungs work, and he knows immediately that Bucky’s still aren’t right. He should be gulping air, coughing, clearing the dust out of his airways; instead, he’s fighting for every short, sharp gasp. Steve starts to grab his shoulders, then hesitates. Will it help to try to sit him up, or make it worse? What if his spine is injured? “Bucky,” he says helplessly.

“Steve,” Bucky says, grabbing his hand and squeezing tight—thankfully, not with the metal one. His skin is cold. He’s in shock, and the only way Steve is going to survive this is by focusing on fixing that, and not on the fact that the last time he saw anyone else struggling like this, it was his mother in 1938.

“I’m with you, Buck.”

Bucky’s eyes are wide. “Ca—ca—can’t breathe,” he wheezes.

“I know. You got hit hard, but you’re fine. You just got the wind knocked out of you. Try to ride it out.” Steve knows it’s a lie; he also knows there’s nothing he can do but try to keep Bucky calm until the medics get here. He grabs Bucky’s hand and says, “Look at me. Breathe with me. In… hold it… out. Okay? Again. In… Good. And out.”

Bucky’s breathing is slowing down a little, but he doesn’t seem to be getting any more oxygen. His lips are alarmingly blue. “Jesus, fuck, is—this what asthma feels like? God, how do you stand it?”

“Stop trying to talk,” Steve orders. He feels like a piece of spun glass, so fragile that if a pin drops in the plaza right now, the sound might shatter him. “We’re gonna take you to S.H.I.E.L.D. medical and they’re gonna fix you right up.”

“You’re a lying—liar who tells damn lies,” Bucky says, which Steve can’t disagree with. “Steve, you gotta—gotta promise me something.”

“Anything, Buck.”

“Promise me—” Bucky’s eyes lock onto Steve’s. “No matter how—bad it is—don’t let ’em cut my arm off, okay?”

Steve’s jaw drops, and Bucky cracks up. He’s clutching at his side where the blood is and his eyes are hazy with pain, but somehow he’s still—there’s no other word for it— _giggling_ when Steve says, “Christ, Bucky,” and that only makes it worse.

“Made you swear,” he says, around a ragged breath. “Best—day—ever.”

“You’re such a _jerk.”_

“Hey, you—can’t be mad at me, punk, I’m a—fuckin’ hero,” is the last thing Bucky manages to say before he passes out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was the world’s longest chapter so I split it in two, but I DIDN’T POST IT AS A CLIFFHANGER (for once). I could have, but I decided to be nice (also for once).  
> The coffee order in this chapter (and Bucky's coffee addiction in general) is not my first little homage to Owlet's magnificent fic "This You Protect," but it is definitely my least subtle.  
> Of course the newscaster is Robin Scherbatsky. C'mon, I _had_ to.  
>  Thanks to alby_mangroves for the comment that inspired the bit about Steve waking up from the ice in this AU. :)


	5. Chapter 5

They take shifts at the hospital. It turns out Clint’s not as fine as he claimed—some doombots got up on top of the building somehow and got a couple of hits in, including one that may have broken his nose (“Again?” Natasha says. _“Really?”)_ —but he won’t let anyone touch him until they get an update on Bucky’s condition. After twenty minutes, Pepper shows up with Happy Hogan and a few of his people to bolster the hospital’s security staff; after forty minutes, Sam arrives, with enough food from a local deli to feed a small army. The biggest surprise comes an hour in, when Fury walks into the waiting room, asks, “Any news?”—as if there’s the slightest chance he doesn’t already know—and when they all shake their heads, he sits down to wait in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs, just like the rest of them.

Steve envies them. He can’t eat, can’t sit still, and looking through the magazines in the waiting room just makes him angry at anyone who has time to care about kitchen remodels and celebrity baby bumps, because their world _isn’t_ hanging by a thread. He gets a cup of coffee he doesn’t want because it gives him something to do and forgets to drink it until Clint swipes it to keep it from going to waste, then gets another and does exactly the same thing. Finally, Bruce—who’s not looking so great himself after a draining Hulk-to-Banner transition—leans over and says something to Natasha, who nods, leaves briefly, and comes back with a battered deck of playing cards. “Get over here and ante up, Rogers,” she orders, and drafts Clint and Sam into a poker game with them, using pieces of broken crayons from the lounge’s toy box as chips. He’ll thank her later; the knot in his stomach doesn’t go away, but it’s a little easier to focus on red and black numbers, suits and sequences, small wins and small losses.

Two hours in, a nurse reports to them that Bucky is out of danger, and the tension in the room drains away. Clint finally goes off to be tended, Fury nods and departs as enigmatically as he came, and Pepper insists that Tony and Bruce go back to the Tower. That’s the first time Steve consciously realizes that Tony is exceptionally quiet, and that his hands are shaky when he pats Steve on the shoulder as he walks past. He needs to get to the bottom of whatever is going on with Tony, but not now, when he can barely think himself.

“You should go, too,” he tells Natasha. “You have to be exhausted, and Bucky might be out for hours yet.”

“Steve, we’re not just here for Bucky,” Natasha says, in the tone that means she’s saying something blindingly obvious. “We’re also here for you.”

“Yeah,” Sam agrees, “and I drank Bucky’s coffee after he left, so it’s not like I’m sleeping tonight.”

“The three-shot two-pump white chocolate mocha? Do you have a death wish, Sam?”

“I’m not saying good life decisions were made. Now, I’m gonna go make sure Clint’s doing okay. And remember, you’re into me for half a box of crayons, so by the time I get back, you’d better be ready to ante up.”

“You know,” Steve says, as Sam walks away, “they might not even let me see Bucky tonight, since I’m not family.”

“Don’t worry about that,” Natasha says, sitting down and pushing her own crayon pieces into an orderly pile. “Pepper smoothed it over with the nurses. They’ll let you in, or they’ll answer to Pepper.”

Steve nods. No one with half a brain ever takes the “answer to Pepper” option. “Natasha, if I didn’t know better, I’d think you were trying to get me and Bucky back together.”

“And what if I am?”

“Not that I’m complaining, but weren’t you the one who said love is for children?”

“Well,” Natasha says, her eyes darting to the door Sam just walked through before they return to him, “I can’t say I’d exactly be heartbroken if the two of you were to prove me wrong.”

 

“James… Buchanan… Barnes,” Bucky mumbles, and Steve sits up. He’s not sure how long he’s been waiting in the chair by Bucky’s bed. “Bucky,” he says. _“Bucky.”_

“Sergeant… 32557—”

“Bucky, wake up. It’s me.” Steve has seen this before—every once in a while, Bucky wakes up thinking he’s still in the cave in Afghanistan. “It’s Steve.”

“Steve,” Bucky repeats, and then he smiles, such a helplessly genuine and unguarded smile that it threatens to break Steve’s heart clean in half. “Steve.”

“Hey.” Steve forces a smile back. “You’re okay, Buck. You’re in New York, in the hospital. Do you remember what happened?”

Bucky nods, and the plates in his left arm shift and click. “I got hit. Couldn’t breathe…”

“Yeah, your lung collapsed. They put in a chest tube to fix it. And they had you on a ventilator, so they said your throat would hurt and you shouldn’t talk too much. But you’re on the mend now. See that? I wasn’t lying. You’re gonna be fine.”

“Can I go home?”

“You gotta stay in the hospital for a couple days, but somebody can stay with you if—”

“No, dumbass,” Bucky sighs. “I mean, can I move back in with you.”

“Of course,” Steve says, startled. “You never really moved out. You just gave me some space to figure out that I was being an idiot.”

“Okay, mark your fuckin’ calendar, punk, ’cause this is the only time I’m ever gonna say this, but Steve, you’re the smartest person I know. And you were right.”

“About what?”

“About the Mandarin. About how we should’ve gone after him right away. I didn’t fight you on that because I thought you were wrong. I fought you because—”

“Bucky, we don’t have to do this right now, you’re supposed to be resting—”

“—because I was scared to lose another team.”

For a minute, it feels like Steve’s own air supply has been cut off. Here it is, the thing he thought he and Bucky would never talk about. “Bucky,” he says, and then stops, because he has no idea what else to say.

“I still see their faces sometimes,” Bucky persists. “Ramirez, Forrest, Weisinger—I was their sergeant, and they were a bunch of _kids,_ and it was a stupid escort mission. Should’ve been easy, except somebody fucked up somewhere and we drove into a trap. When we got hit… I told Forrest to stay with Stark when I got out of the Humvee. I knew nobody but me had a chance to pick off a sniper in all those rocks. He saw me get hit, and he disobeyed orders and got out to pull me back in. Dumb fuckin’ kid got killed because he was trying to do the right thing.”

“Bucky, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know, I _know,_ survivor’s guilt. I went through it all in therapy. But I can take a hit myself just fine, Steve. It’s when my team’s at risk that I get really fucked up. I knew you were gonna hate me for it, but if I’d let us go in against orders and we’d lost Clint or Tasha or Bruce or even fuckin’ Tony—”

“Do you really think I care about the goddamn Mandarin right now?”

Bucky blinks. “We kind of had a whole big fight about him.”

“No, we had a whole big fight about me having something to prove. Listen, Bucky—when I was growing up, eugenics was a big deal.”

“Yeah, Steve, Nazis bad. I got that part in history class.”

“No, you see, it wasn’t just the Nazis. People bought into it here, too. If you couldn’t contribute—if you were disabled, or, say, too sick to work a lot of the time—then people looked at you differently. Like you were a drain on society. A burden. Useless.”

“Good thing I wasn’t around in the 1940s. I would’ve kicked their ableist asses.”

“Yeah, I don’t doubt that. But I grew up with it; I heard that stuff my whole life. My mother was the only person who ever saw me as being worth anything, and after she died, I… well, I’d always had something to prove. When I got the serum and it worked, I thought I was proving that anybody could be anything. And when I lost the serum, all that stuff came back to haunt me. You know, Bruce told me I should get help for my body dysphoria.”

“The fuck is that?”

“A big word that means I don’t like myself much, I think.”

“Oh. Well, no shit, Banner. Look,” Bucky says, “don’t get me wrong, I hate that you have all this health stuff to deal with. I know you feel lousy way more often than you let on, and I think it’s a pretty reasonable thing to be pissed at the world about. And I’m not gonna lie, I wouldn’t be _complaining_ if you were still ripped like you were in 1945. But you’re so much more than just your body. Remember when we first met, and you went off on that guy who gave me shit because of my arm?”

Of course Steve remembers; he feels his face flush with anger just thinking about it. “He was an asshole.”

“Yeah.” Bucky laughs softly. “I thought you were gonna throw a punch at him, I really did. You were sick as a dog, couldn’t even get out of bed, and you were still ready to fistfight the fuckin’ moon for me. I feel the same way about you, Steve. Even if the person I gotta defend you from is yourself. You don’t have to like it when your body doesn’t work right, but you gotta cut yourself a break, okay? Stop thinking you have to save the world all by yourself.”

“Hey, Bucky?”

“Yeah?”

“How can somebody as dumb as you say such smart things?”

Bucky smiles. “The trick is lowering everybody’s expectations. Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“Those things we fought today, are they really called doombots, or am I just super high on painkillers and making stuff up?”

The ‘we’ isn’t lost on Steve, even if he doesn’t think he did much. “They really are called doombots.”

“Huh. Doombots. You better not try to tell me Doctor Who isn’t believable ever again. Hey, Steve?”

“Yeah?”

“What does a guy have to do to get a kiss around here?”

Steve leans over, careful not to jostle any of the tubes and wires between them, and presses his lips to Bucky’s. He’s expecting it to be awkward, after the separation, but it’s only a second before he’s melting into the kiss. “Hey, Bucky?” he says, when he pulls away.

“Yeah?”

“I love you.”

“See that?” Bucky says, closing his eyes. “Doombots, and I made you swear, and you love me. Best day ever.”

 

As far as Steve is concerned, the elevator can’t reach the seventy-sixth floor of Avengers Tower fast enough. Bucky’s color is better and his breathing isn’t as labored, but he picked up a bad cough in the hospital that’s wearing him out more than he’ll admit, and he’s leaning heavily on Steve, which is not an optimal situation for either of them. “I still think they should’ve kept you for a few more days,” he says, eyeing Bucky critically.

“Okay, you do know how much of a hypocrite you are, right? I feel so much better already for being out of there. Besides,” Bucky says, turning his head so he can rest his forehead against Steve’s, “it’s been weeks since I’ve had you alone, and the only good part of fighting is the make-up sex. Tonight, you and I are gonna do things they hadn’t _invented_ yet in the 1940s.”

“Bucky. Bucky! Stop.” Steve pulls Bucky’s hands away from where they’re already sliding under his shirt. “Not yet.”

“What, are you getting shy on me all of a sudden?”

“No, but—”

“Is it this thing?” Bucky touches the spot on his side that’s still bandaged where the chest tube went in. There’s a little cross-shaped wound there that’s going to add another scar to his collection. Bucky had cracked a _no more bikinis_ joke that seemed funny at the time; Steve didn’t consider that he might actually be touchy about it.

“Of course not,” he says. “It’s just, you’re supposed to be taking it easy.”

“I’ve had all the taking it easy I can stand. C’mon, please.” Bucky has his tongue in Steve’s mouth before he can stop it, and Steve intends to push him away, he really does, except, well. It’s Bucky. He ends up leaning into it instead, standing up on his toes and hooking his arms around Bucky’s neck as the elevator door dings open.

There’s a moment of startled silence, and then Clint says, “Well. God bless America.”

Bucky growls low in his throat and flips a mismatched double bird in Clint’s direction. He makes a point of dragging out the kiss for a few seconds longer before he turns and looks, but when he does, his scowl melts. “Aw, guys,” he says. The Avengers have assembled again, with a couple of additions—Pepper and Sam and Happy and Tony’s buddy Rhodes, Maria Hill, and a handful of other friends he’s made at S.H.I.E.L.D. They’ve even hung a _Welcome Home, Bucky!_ banner across the back wall. Everybody starts clapping, and Jarvis chimes in with a “Welcome home, sir,” from his speakers in the ceiling, and Bucky blinks rapidly and looks away.

“Hey.” Steve slips his arm around Bucky’s waist. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” Bucky rubs a hand across his eyes. “Shut up, punk. I’m not crying.”

“Didn’t say you were.”

“Hey. Captain Americas. Or is it Captains America? This calls for a toast.” Tony pushes a glass into each of their hands, then lifts his own and declares, “To Bucky Barnes, singlehandedly protecting the New York news media from exploding doombots.”

“Stark, you did not just say ‘singlehandedly,’ you asshole.” Bucky laughs, flopping down on the sofa, but then he starts coughing again, and Steve puts a hand on his shoulder and looks around for Pepper, silently begging her for help.

“All right, come on, everybody, we’ll move the party to our place and let Bucky get some rest,” Pepper says, and everybody goes “aww,” but they do start to clear out. Pepper is the last one on the elevator, and she looks back over her shoulder and winks before the doors close.

Steve turns to Bucky, who’s smirking. “I didn’t expect that to work,” he says. “Hey, look, Stark left the booze. Let’s drink a bottle of something that costs more than my first car and make out.”

“Sure. You go get in bed and I’ll join you in a minute.”

“I like how you think, Rogers.” Bucky picks up a bottle and disappears into the bedroom.

Steve gives him five minutes by the clock, then walks quietly down the hall to check on him. Just like he expected, Bucky is out like a light. Steve pulls the blankets over him, brushes his hair out of his face, and is laying a kiss on his forehead when Bucky wakes up just enough to murmur, “Y’know, if you’re not happy avengers-ing, you could always do this instead.”

“What, take care of you?”

“Take care of _people._ Like be a paramedic or something. You’d be good at it. And I bet you know half the jargon already.”

“That’s… actually a pretty good idea, Buck. But right now, you just get some rest, okay?”

“Mmm.”

As relieved as he is to have Bucky home, Steve isn’t ready to sleep yet, so he makes his way back to the living room. He picks up the glass Stark poured for him—Bucky wasn’t kidding, it’s Stark’s favorite Scotch, which means the price would almost certainly appall him—and takes a sip, which doesn’t impress him particularly. He sets it down and starts going through the pile of mail that’s been collecting on the coffee table, since he’s been spending every waking moment at the hospital with Bucky all week.

A large envelope catches his eye, and he slides it out of the stack and spills the contents out on the table. Inside he finds a handful of glossy brochures that he looks at quizzically, wondering briefly if this is something for Bucky from the hospital, since the image on the front of the first one is a stock photo image of a doctor, smiling, with a hand on a patient’s shoulder. The second has a picture of a grassy field with flowers, and the third has a woman jogging down a beach with a dog beside her. The only thing they have in common is the word “EXTREMIS” written across the front flap. He opens the one with the dog and reads,

_Recent advances in genetics tell us that the human body is destined to be upgraded. Imagine if we could unlock the hidden potential in the human brain to enhance the human body. Strength—stamina—rapid healing—these are just a few of the possibilities…_

The rest of the brochure is equally full of glowing praise of the product, but it never says how Extremis works, or even what exactly it is. The weirdest part is that Jarvis usually sorts out the junk mail before it gets delivered. He’s about to toss the whole stack in the trash when he notices the sticky note attached to one of the brochures:

  _Steve—heard from a friend at S.H.I.E.L.D. that you were inquiring after our work. Hope you’ll find the enclosed interesting. If you’d like to discuss further, just give me a call any time at the attached number._

 _Yours,_  
_Aldrich Killian_  
_Founder, Advanced Idea Mechanics_

Steve shakes his head. He has no idea what to think about this. He remembers Jemma saying, _Ethically, he’s quite suspect._ He thinks about Bucky saying, _You’re so much more than just your body._ He remembers his mother saying, _Stevie, sweetheart, don’t listen to them; whatever they tell you, you’re good enough._

He also remembers dropping out of a plane outside of Krausberg in Germany, hoisting the shield effortlessly and punching his way into an enemy camp. He remembers facing Johann Schmidt’s burnt face and blazing eyes, saying _I can do this all day_ and meaning it. And he remembers Bucky, holding his shield over a group of civilians in need of protecting, while he watched from the safety of a Quinjet twenty yards away.

He promised Jemma he wouldn’t do anything rash. He didn’t promise her he wouldn’t give any and all ideas their due consideration.

He tucks the brochures into a blank sketchbook in a pile of art supplies before he follows Bucky to bed. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! If you loved the last two chapters, go me, and if you hated them, yay, you’ve survived my extremely self-indulgent hurt/comfort with obligatory pining (and doombots). Still occasionally taking random prompts! Up next, probably fluff for a chapter or two, and then I’ll be meandering slowly back toward a plot.


	6. Chapter 6

“You really don’t have to be nervous about meeting my family,” Bucky says. He’s just turned the car off the highway—it’s the least flashy of Tony’s Audis, which Tony badgered them into borrowing for this trip because he can be a weirdly generous pain in the ass when he has a mind to—and they’re driving through what Bucky insists is a normal, modern, upper-middle-class neighborhood, although Steve doesn’t really buy it. Bucky might be willing to dismiss the houses as “cookie-cutter McMansions,” whatever those are, but Steve still can’t fathom what people _do_ with all that space.

“I know you said they’ll be fine with you bringing home a boyfriend, Bucky—”

“Because it’s true. Look, I know plenty of people are still assholes, but I’ve been out since I was fifteen. Anybody who had a problem with me dating guys is either over it or isn’t worth my time.”

“Yeah, but what if they just hate me?”

“Well, you are kind of a punk. Stevie, stop worrying. They’re gonna love you.” Bucky hesitates, slowing the car down to check the house numbers. “There is, uh, one thing I need to ask you, though,” he says, as he turns into one of the driveways. “Can we not talk shop this weekend?”

“Really? What about the kids? I thought they’d be dying to hear all about their uncle the Avenger.”

“Well, see, the thing is,” Bucky says, throwing the car into Park and popping open the door, “I kind of didn’t tell my sister yet. Okay, let’s go in.”

“Bucky!” Steve grabs his hand and yanks him back into the car. “You didn’t tell Becca that you’re Captain America?”

Bucky winces. “I have reasons, okay?”

“If she doesn’t know, what does she think you spent a week in the hospital for?” The question is followed by a long enough silence that Steve says, _“Bucky.”_

“Aw, no, don’t do the disappointed look! I didn’t want her feeling obligated to come to New York and make a big fuss over me. Especially not when you were already fussing enough for six people. Can you just give me a pass this one time?”

“Okay, I’ll make you a deal,” Steve says. “Becca won’t hear it from me, but you have to tell her yourself as soon as you get a chance. If nothing else, you said she’s a doctor. She’s going to notice that you’re not at your best.” Which is something of an understatement, given that Bucky is on mandatory medical leave until he’s gone six weeks without any new crushing injuries to his ribcage.

“I’ll just say I took a bad fall playing Ultimate Frisbee. No lie there. The shield _is_ basically the world’s best Frisbee.”

Steve tries not to laugh, but it’s impossible. “You’re a disaster, Barnes. I don’t know why I’m dating you.”

“I guess I’m just irresistibly charming or whatever.” The front door to the house is opening; Bucky turns, and his face lights up. “Emmy! C’mere and give your uncle a hug.”

The little girl who’s standing on the porch races down the steps, and Bucky sweeps her up in his arms and starts to swing her around—clearly a longstanding habit he hasn’t thought through, because he pales and quickly sets her down again. The woman following Emily sees it too. Steve takes his first good look at Rebecca Barnes-Proctor: she’s what they called a handsome woman in his day, dark-haired like her brother, wearing what Bucky calls hipster glasses. “Bucky, are you okay?”

“He’s fine, except for his brain. This idiot will do anything to win a Frisbee contest, including cracking his own ribs,” Steve says, stepping up beside him. It _is_ technically the truth; he’s seen Bucky do some damn stupid things playing ordinary Frisbee with Clint’s dog. “Pleased to meet you, ma’am. I’m—”

“Steve! I’m so glad I’m finally getting to meet you,” Becca says, pulling him into a hug before releasing him and latching onto Bucky. Bucky tenses, then realizes she’s carefully avoiding his ribs and relaxes, wrapping his arms around her.

It knocks Steve out, sometimes, how unabashedly physical Bucky is, how he owns the space around him and at the same time has no problem pulling other people into that space. It’s been a long time since Steve was that comfortable in his own skin. Before the serum, he’d had a lifetime of hunching his small body down even smaller, hoping to go mostly unnoticed by the local bullies—he never ran from a fight, even started his share, but if he was going to make his mother cry, it had to be for a better reason than _look at this little bastard, thinks he owns the place._ And even after the serum, it still took the prison break in Austria before he really felt entitled to the space he filled. But Bucky doesn’t have that muscle memory of curling in on himself; he moves with ease and confidence, whether he’s swinging his niece through the air or bashing a robot in the face or looking up to meet Steve’s eyes while he’s using his mouth to—

Okay, now is not the time to think about that last one.

“Are you a grownup?” a small voice says.

Steve looks down. Emily is standing beside him, looking skeptical in the way only very small children can. He pegs her at six, maybe seven years old—she’s taller than he was at that age, but who wasn’t? “Yeah, I’m a grownup.”

“How come you’re little?”

“Emily,” Becca reproaches.

“It’s okay, I don’t mind,” Steve lies. “I never got very tall because I wouldn’t eat vegetables or go to bed on time when I was a kid.”

“Oh,” says Emily, clearly rethinking her life, while Bucky grins and gives him a thumbs-up behind Emily’s back. Then she says, “Uncle Bucky, can we play Legos?”

“Jeez, let me get our stuff in the house first, Em.”

“Go,” Steve says, giving him a push. “I’ll get the bags.”

“No, I can—ow!” Bucky claps his hand over his ribs, where Steve has just poked the half-healed thoracostomy incision. “Okay, okay, you made your point,” he says, tossing Steve the car keys and letting Emily drag him into the house.

Steve breaks the silence that follows by popping the trunk with the key fob—Bucky showed him how to work it, because people in the modern era are too lazy to turn keys—and hauling the first suitcase out. Rebecca takes it upon herself to grab the second one. “I’ve got it,” she says, over his protests, and then, “If my stubborn asshole of a brother is letting us carry his stuff, he must be in a lot of pain.”

“Yeah, I’ll make him take something for it,” Steve promises. Bucky refused to take any painkillers before driving; of course, Steve had offered to drive instead, but then he made the mistake of admitting that he might never have _technically_ renewed the license he got in 1942, and apparently “I didn’t need a license to drive a tank in Nazi Germany” isn’t considered a compelling argument.

“You must really have Bucky wrapped around your little finger if you can _make_ him do anything,” Becca says, smiling. “Is this your car, or did you also get him to trade in that damn motorcycle?”

“No, a friend loaned us his car for this trip. But I did tell Bucky that if he wrecks another bike, I’ll get him banned from every coffee shop in the five boroughs.”

Becca laughs. It’s a good sound. “I’m so glad Bucky is letting you look after him, Steve. Ever since our dad died, Bucky’s been trying to take care of everyone around him. Even when he was lying in a hospital bed with no left arm, he was worried about how we were taking it. But he’s actually accepting help from you. That’s a minor miracle in itself.”

Steve smiles, but his stomach gives a sudden lurch. What would Becca say if she knew Bucky was only hurt because Steve sent him into a situation where a building could fall on him? “If you don’t mind my asking, how did your father die? Bucky doesn’t talk about it.”

“He was killed in an Army training exercise. It would’ve been… almost twelve years ago now, I guess, right before Christmas. Just a stupid accident, exactly the kind of thing those drills are supposed to prevent. After that, Bucky felt like he had to carry on the tradition. I begged him not to do it, but,” Becca shrugs, “you know Bucky.”

“A guy who wouldn’t quit after he lost an arm, you have to admire his dedication.”

“No you don’t. My brother’s an idiot,” Becca says fervently. “We came so close to losing him, Steve. And I don’t just mean because he was wounded in action. In a way, I think being in the Army made things simple for him. It gave him a purpose. And once they discharged him, he was just… adrift, for so long. It was like the whole thing had turned him into a different person. He’s coming back to himself since he met you, though. Whatever you’re doing for my brother, I hope you’ll keep doing it.”

Steve doesn’t answer. He focuses instead on lugging the suitcase and avoiding Becca’s eyes, because he knows it’s not him giving Bucky his new purpose at all. It’s Captain America—or rather, the grand inspirational figure that Bucky agreed to embody. He knows because being Cap used to do that for him. And he also knows that passing on the shield was the right thing to do, but now more than ever, Steve feels keenly that it was a privilege to wear that title, and now the privilege is gone.

Adrift. That’s a good word. It’s certainly not Bucky’s fault that Steve has been adrift since before he went into the ice.

Somehow or other, he manages to keep up a steady stream of small talk until the suitcases are stashed in the guest bedroom, and Becca leads him downstairs to the kids’ playroom (he’s definitely not going to say anything about the fact that in his day, a “playroom” would have been a concrete stoop or a fire escape). He finds Bucky sitting on the floor in front of the couch, using his right hand to fish Lego blocks out of a bucket and sort them into piles in front of a small boy who must be Jason, while his left hand scratches a little orange dog behind the ears. Emily is on the couch behind him, clipping plastic barrettes into his hair. Steve grabs his phone and snaps a picture before Bucky notices him in the doorway.

“Oh, hey, send that to me so I can put it on my Instagram,” Bucky says, which takes all the joy out of Steve’s original plan to send it to Clint. “Steve, meet my nephew Jason and my canine overlord, Banjo.”

“Hi, Steve,” says the boy, without looking up from the Legos. The dog rolls its eyes in Steve’s direction and glares at him, as if daring him to make a move on its human. Steve makes a quick threat assessment and sits down on the other side of Banjo, giving its belly a tentative rub. Banjo doesn’t react until he stops, when it leans over and bops his hand with its nose until he starts again.

“Hey, Jay-Jay,” Bucky says, “show Steve your new hearing aid. Steve, you’re gonna love this.”

Steve thinks at first that Bucky is just trying to give the kid’s self-confidence a boost, but then he looks at Jason’s right ear and realizes: it’s bright purple, exactly like—

“It’s just like Hawkeye’s,” Jason pipes up. “The other kids used to make fun of me sometimes but they don’t anymore, because Hawkeye is _so cool._ I’m gonna be an Avenger when I grow up.”

“You’ll do no such thing,” Becca says sharply.

“What are you going to be when you grow up, Emily?” Bucky asks, before Steve can open his mouth.

“A wolf,” Emily replies matter-of-factly.

Bucky snorts, and Becca’s cool expression is replaced by a smile. “Hey, Steve, tell Emmy about the wolf you saw when you were backpacking around Europe after art school,” Bucky adds.

Steve still hasn’t really gotten his head around the fact that walking across Europe is a thing kids do for fun now, not because they got marching orders. But Bucky was firm: not even his family gets to know who Steve really is—the kids aren’t old enough to understand the importance of keeping the secret, he says. Still, he can’t help feeling that Bucky is disconcertingly quick on his feet when it comes to lying.

It’s not hard to adapt the wolf story; it’s mostly a matter of remembering to refer to the Commandos as his friends, which they were, rather than his squad, which means they were also something more. It goes over well enough with the kids that he’s racking his brain for another story he can tell without having to edit too heavily when the back door opens, and both kids yell “Dad!” and charge into the kitchen.

Steve follows them, and gets his first look at Becca’s husband Alex, who’s blonde, not especially tall, and wears thick glasses. “Not a word about me and Bec having a type, not a fuckin’ _word,”_ Bucky says into Steve’s ear, sliding his arms around his chest and resting his chin on his shoulder. “Hey, you ever thought about having kids?”

“I don’t think that’s in the cards for us unless there’s something you’re not telling me, Buck.”

“Steve, I would definitely have your babies.” Bucky laughs. “I mean adopting, you dork. They let gay couples do that now.”

“I… I don’t know. It’s something I never really thought about.”

“Peggy never brought it up?”

“I guess we both figured it wouldn’t be an issue until after the war.” Steve squeezes Bucky’s hand, signaling gratitude; he knows that ever since their fight, it costs Bucky something every time Peggy’s name gets mentioned. “Why? Do you want kids?”

“I dunno. I love Jay and Emmy, but it’s nice to be able to give them back when they get hungry and whiny. It’s not something I’d want to do tomorrow. I was just curious if you ever thought about it.”

Steve nods. Bucky’s starting to think about the two of them as a long-term thing. And he certainly loves Bucky and plans to stay with him; it’s just… well. It’s hard to think about the future when he’s still chasing leads on getting the serum back. If—when—that happens, it will change everything.

This time it’s Becca’s husband who spares him from having to say something clever. Alex comes over to greet Bucky with a hug—there’s _so much_ hugging in this family—and turns to Steve. “And this must be the boyfriend we’ve heard so much about.”

“You know, I’m starting to think Becca isn’t pleased that Bucky took this long to bring me around,” Steve says.

Alex grins. “You’re not wrong. Bucky tells me you’re a military history buff. I’m teaching a unit on World War II next semester, and it’s not really my field. Any chance I could pick your brain after dinner?”

“Happy to help if I can,” Steve says, shooting Bucky a look that means _I’m going to kill you later._ Bucky responds with an innocent shrug that fools no one and goes off to help Becca set the table.

It’s not the first time Steve has noticed that food is a lot better in the twenty-first century. Becca serves them something called chicken piccata, which he finds amazing and the kids declare to be gross. “I bet Hawkeye never has to eat chicken piccata,” Jason mutters, stabbing at the food with his fork.

Bucky almost chokes on his food, because it’s true; the day Clint Barton voluntarily eats something that isn’t pizza, street meat, or on a sandwich bun is going to be a cold day indeed.

“I’ll bet Hawkeye doesn’t sass his mother,” Alex says mildly. “Bucky, you okay?”

“Yeah.” Bucky chokes off a cough and reaches for his water glass, carefully avoiding Steve’s eyes. Steve can’t quite hide his smile. _Serves you right for making me ride the Cyclone at Coney Island and laughing when I threw up, pal._

“Captain America’s stupid,” Jason declares, and it’s only lucky timing that Bucky doesn’t spit water all over the table. “He doesn’t even have any powers.”

“Neither does Hawkeye,” Emily fires back.

“Hawkeye works _really hard_ with his bow _and_ he has a dog,” Jason says, because evidently that’s a critical detail.

“Thor’s still the best because he can fly.”

“Iron Man can fly higher than Thor can. Iron Man can fly to _space—”_

“That’s _enough!”_ Rebecca slams her fist on the table so hard that all the utensils jump. “Jason James Barnes-Proctor, what did I tell you about mentioning that name in this house?”

“You said not to,” Jason mumbles, looking down at his plate.

“And what did you _just do?”_

“Becca,” Bucky says, “it’s okay. He was just messing around.”

Becca stares at him. “Oh, so an arrogant billionaire who builds weapons of mass destruction puts on a shiny metal suit and I’m just supposed to forget all the human suffering he was responsible for? Including my own brother losing an arm for the sake of a missile demonstration?”

Bucky sets down his fork. “Rebecca, could I see you in the kitchen for a minute?” he says, and Steve can only assume it’s some kind of Barnes family code, because Becca shoves her chair back and slams through the door, leaving it swinging on its hinges behind her.

“Kids,” Alex says quietly, “if you’re done with dinner, you can go play,” and Emily and Jason take off with no further urging. Alex turns to Steve. “Feel like coming up to my office and talking about the Battle of Midway?”

“I’ll stay,” Steve says.

“Suit yourself. Word to the wise, though? When the Barnes kids start scrapping, don’t get in the middle of it.” Alex gets up from the table, leaving Steve to focus on the conversation. He’s starting to get what Bucky meant about cheaply built mass-produced housing, because even with his shitty hearing, he’s catching every word. And somewhat to his surprise, Bucky is vehemently defending Tony Stark.

“…know I blamed Tony for my problems for a long time, Bec—”

 _“Tony?_ You’re on a first-name basis with the Merchant of Death now?”

“Okay, the guy has definitely made some fucked-up choices, but he’s suffered too, and I really think he’s trying to turn over a new leaf with the whole Iron Man thing. You know, sometimes I think what he went through is worse than what I did, having to do it all in the public eye like that.”

“Oh, the poor little multibillionaire. How does nobody remember that neither of you would have been there at all if Stark hadn’t been getting rich off designing weapons that killed countless people? And now he has these, these ridiculous _Avengers_ running around playing superhero and teaching kids that violence is the only way to solve anything. Your own niece and nephew want to grow up to be fighters now, and they haven’t learned a damn thing from the way this family has suffered. For God’s sake, is it too much to ask that we get one generation where we don’t lose somebody in the family to a goddamn war?”

There’s a silence. Then there’s a muted sob, and Steve hears the plates in Bucky’s arm slide against each other as he crosses the room. He’s wrapping his arms around Becca again, Steve is sure. “You didn’t lose me, Bec.”

Her voice is muffled. “We almost did.”

Steve shakes his head. Families are so complicated. His own was always simple: him and his mother against the world. If she’d lived longer, would she really have been proud of him for joining the Army, or is that just a fantasy he constructed in his head after she was gone? The First World War cost her a husband, and Steve is suddenly, guiltily glad she didn’t live long enough for the next one to cost her a son.

“Becca,” Bucky says. “I don’t regret enlisting. If I hadn’t, who knows where I’d be now? I wouldn’t have met most of my friends, and I can tell you I wouldn’t give any of them up to get my real left arm back. God, I wouldn’t have met Steve. If I had to go through all that shit to be the person I am now so I can be with him, then you know what? I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“You’re such a loser, Bucky. You and your big squishy heart under all that I’m-a-big-scary-badass bullshit.” Becca sniffles. “Wait, I thought you said you met Steve in the hospital after you crashed your bike.”

“I did,” Bucky says, finally caught without a good lie on hand. “But then, uh, I only ran into him again because of this guy who sort of knew me from the Army. It’s… it’s complicated.”

“What isn’t with you? Well, thank God for Steve, anyway. At least I can rest assured that one of you two has some common sense.”

There’s no reason Bucky has to laugh quite as hard as he does, and Steve takes that as confirmation that he doesn’t need to intervene. He follows Alex to his office and they spend a couple of hours with maps and books, while he tries to remember to refer to Guadalcanal and the Battle of Britain as things that happened in the distant past, not as news reports that are still fresh in his memory.

He doesn’t have a chance to talk to Bucky again until the rest of the household has settled in for the night, when he comes out of the guest bathroom to find Bucky sitting cross-legged on the bed, hunched over his phone. “Whatcha doing?”

“Sending a picture of Jason’s hearing aid to Clint. He’s gonna lose his shit when I tell him what Jason said about it.” Bucky looks at him speculatively, and Steve braces himself, knowing what’s coming, before Bucky can say, “You ever think about trying one?”

“The earbuds for the comms do enough to amplify sound when the Avengers go out. I can get by the rest of the time.”

 “I’m just saying, you got, what, thirty percent hearing loss on the one side? Might be worth a shot, you know, since The Amazing Hawkeye made it _cool_ and everything.”

Normally, Bucky’s sarcasm is music to Steve’s ears, but tonight it grates on him. “You know, I get that you’re just dying to fix me, but maybe I’m not in the mood for another diagnosis right now.”

“What?” Bucky blinks. “Fix you? Steve, you’re not some fucking broken machine. I love you. I want to make things easier for you. And considering that today went great and you’re still in some kind of mood, I’d really like to know what crawled up your ass and died.”

“Oh, yeah, today was fantastic. I really liked that part where your sister despises the Avengers.”

Bucky gives a sharp sigh. “Don’t worry about that. Don’t know if you’ve noticed, but us Barneses can get a little protective, and she’s kind of holding a grudge over…” He gestures at his left arm. “But I’ll talk her around on Stark. Just give me time.”

“You think you can charm your way out of this?”

“Yes! Why not?”

“Bucky, she’s spent years blaming Tony for you getting hurt. And the grudge she’s holding isn’t just about Tony. She still resents that you joined the Army and ended up almost dying for a cause she doesn’t believe in.”

“Are you kidding me? She thinks I was there for a _cause?_ I know you joined up to fight the Nazis and save lives, Steve, but when I enlisted, I was a goddamn _kid._ I’d lost my dad not that long before, and things weren’t great between us when he died. I mean, he loved me, but he just couldn’t get his head around the whole bisexual thing, and I… I was so wrapped up in my own stupid teenage stuff that I kind of wrote him off. I didn’t know how much I wanted to try to make it right between us until it was too late. Anyway, he’d always wanted me to join the Army like he did, and it felt like something I needed to do to understand him better, to honor his memory, I guess. Then they sent me to sniper school and I felt like I found my calling. It wasn’t pretty, but I was _good_ at it. I was protecting people. I was making a difference. I…” Bucky rakes both of his hands through his hair—which he only does when he’s really agitated, thanks to some hard lessons about snagging hair in the plates—and says, “I just wanted to do the right thing.”

If Bucky had calculated a response to destroy Steve’s argumentative mood entirely, he couldn’t have come up with a better one than that. He sits down on the bed. “You told Becca any of this?”

“I thought she knew. And now I find out we’ve apparently been misunderstanding each other for ten years, so that’s great.”

“Bucky. What you’re doing now _is_ the right thing. You’re still protecting people and making a difference, and not just by saving lives, either. I bet right now there’s a little amputee kid somewhere who’s annoying the shit out of her mother about how she’s gonna be an Avenger like you. And maybe a teenager who’s thinking, ‘If Captain America can be out and proud, maybe things will get better for me too.’”

“If you’re just trying to make me feel better, punk, then… actually, it’s kind of working.”

“I’m sorry about your dad,” Steve says. “That must have been rough.”

“Well, it wasn’t like he disowned me or anything. It’s just that we’d always been close, and then we weren’t, and I never got to make it right. I’m sure it was harder on you, not even being able to tell your mom.”

“She may have known more than she let on. I didn’t know it at the time, but when I was a kid, we lived a couple blocks from a pretty notorious gay neighborhood. I’m pretty sure she knew what was what. I wish you could have met her. I think the two of you would have gotten along.”

“Yeah, I’m sure your 1930s Irish Catholic mom would’ve thought you having a boyfriend was the cat’s pajamas.”

It’s Steve’s expression, and it makes him smile to hear Bucky use it. “I doubt she would have approved of _us,_ but she would’ve loved _you.”_

“Well, I am—”

“Charming, yeah. I’ve noticed. C’mon, my handsome prince, let’s get some sleep,” Steve says resignedly, and soon enough, Bucky is cuddled up beside him.

After an evening of reliving old battles, Steve wouldn’t have been surprised by a nightmare or two, but when he bolts upright, it’s because Bucky is thrashing and moaning. “Bucky,” he says, grabbing him by both shoulders, _“Bucky,”_ and Bucky gasps himself awake and stares at Steve, wild-eyed. “You’re okay. You’re at your sister’s house in Ewing. You’re safe.”

“Wh—huh—” Bucky’s breathing is ragged. “Fuck,” he pants, and flings his arms around Steve, burying his face in the soft spot between Steve’s neck and shoulder. “Sorry.”

“It’s okay. Do you want to talk about it?”

“Nah. Just the usual anxiety dream crap. What time is it?”

“Uh.” Steve glances at the clock. “4:18. You wanna try to get back to sleep?”

Bucky takes a deep breath, lets it out. “I’m too riled up. Think I’ll take a walk, maybe.”

Neither of them has to state the obvious fact that Bucky won’t be able to relax again until he does a perimeter check. It’s not as if it’s never happened to Steve, either. “You want company?”

“No. No reason both of us should be tired tomorrow. Go back to sleep.”

“Okay,” Steve says, knowing full well that he won’t sleep a wink until Bucky comes back.

Bucky slides his feet into his sneakers and heads downstairs. Steve listens to the sound of the back door opening and shutting, lies there staring at the ceiling for another ten minutes, and then gives up. He grabs Bucky’s hoodie from where it’s puddled on a chair, pulls it on, and sticks his hands in the pockets before he heads down to the kitchen, where he can see a shadow through the frosted glass storm door, a brunette head leaning back against the glass while its owner sits on the back step. He’s about to cross the room and go outside when another figure takes a seat beside the first, and he sees the glint of metal and realizes: the first person was Rebecca, waiting. “Hey,” Bucky says. “Did I wake you? I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. I didn’t know you still did the patrolling thing.”

“I didn’t think you knew I did it at all.”

“Yeah. When you stayed with us after you first got home, you were up at least once every night.”

“Fucking bed was way too soft,” Bucky says, his metal shoulder squeaking against the glass when he shrugs. “I got used to it eventually.”

“If you drank less coffee, you’d sleep better.”

“I only started drinking so much coffee because I couldn’t sleep for shit. It’s just once in a while now, though. And I sleep a lot better when I’m next to Steve. Something about having him there helps keep me grounded.” He pauses. “What do you think of him?”

Steve is aware that the old Steve Rogers never would have eavesdropped on a conversation like this. Of course, Steve is also aware that the old Steve Rogers was about as quiet as a herd of elephants. He stays very still as Becca says, “I like him. He’s sweet, he’s great with the kids, and he seems good for you. I just… I can’t quite figure out what his deal is.”

“His deal? I told you. Grinding childhood poverty, lots of Catholic guilt, too much medical crap for any one person to have to deal with and no family to fall back on. He’s been pretty much stubborning his way through life on his own for a long time. Holds everybody around him to high standards, holds himself to fucking impossible ones, but anybody who falls down, he’s there to pick them up. Won’t back down when he thinks something’s wrong and he can set it right, and he doesn’t care what it costs him personally if he can help somebody else. I don’t know what he sees in me, but he makes me want to be better than I am, and I’m damn lucky to have him.” There’s a hint of a challenge in Bucky’s voice, as if he’s daring Becca to comment on Steve’s physique or prickly temperament, but there’s also a warm glow of pride. He believes every word he’s saying about Steve. It’s humbling.

“I know all of that,” Becca says. “I just get this feeling that he has a lot of secrets.”

Steve hears the arm plates clank against each other as Bucky fidgets. “Becca, there’s something I’ve gotta tell you.”

If there’s a scarier sentence in the world, Steve doesn’t know what it is; he’s not surprised when Becca’s silhouette stiffens against the glass. “What is it?”

“I kind of lied to you about how Steve and I met. There’s no easy way to say this, but, well, I’m… kind of… Captain America.”

There’s another brief silence; then Becca snorts with laughter. “No, you’re not.”

“Um,” says Bucky, “I think I should know.”

“No. People have asked me if it was you before because the guy has a prosthetic that’s a lot like yours, but I keep telling them there were a lot of wounded vets in that program. I knew you’d die before you’d be on a team with Tony Stark. And anyway, you’ve got a white star on your arm, not a red one.”

“So I might’ve kinda been wearing sleeves that cover up the paint job lately.” He pushes up the sleeve of his T-shirt and says, apologetically, “Fuckin’ Stark thought red was more stylish.”

Becca’s voice goes low. “What?”

“Okay, Bec, I love you and I think you’re really smart no matter what, but you can’t be telling me you saw a guy with a metal arm mouthing off to a bunch of reporters and basically coming out on live TV, and you never suspected it was me just because I was wearing some fancy tactical goggles. You’re not Lois Lane circa 1932.”

“I don’t _watch_ the Avengers on television! I told you I don’t want the kids seeing all that violence. I won’t even let them put on the news in the house anymore. And I definitely don’t follow celebrity gossip. Oh my God, Bucky, did you really go on television and—”

“—And say I go both ways? More or less. Wow, you really had no ide— _ow!_ What was that for?”

“You’ve been _Captain America_ this whole time and you never said anything? How could you _do_ that to me?”

“Easily, since you didn’t have a clue that I— _fuck,_ not the ribs! I told you I got _hurt,_ crazy woman!”

“I’m going to kill you! And then I’m going to have your Avenger buddy Thor bring you back from the dead so I can kill you again!”

“I don’t think he knows how to do that. Jesus, Bec, stop hitting! You’re the one who said violence doesn’t solve anything!”

“I think this is one of the few times when it’s worth a shot!” The sound Becca makes is somewhere between a sob and a laugh. “You’re an Avenger. You’re an _Avenger._ No wonder you’re so soft on Tony Stark all of a sudden; you _work_ with the guy. And you didn’t tell me. You just sat there letting us talk about… oh, God, that’s why Steve gave you that look when the kids said Captain America was stupid!”

Now she’s definitely laughing, and it’s not long before Bucky joins in. “I’m seriously going to kill you in the morning,” Becca finally says, when she has her breath back. “But really, what does this have to do with Steve?”

“You’re not gonna hit me again?” Bucky says warily. “Okay, the thing is, Steve isn’t just an artist. He also works for S.H.I.E.L.D. So, yeah, he’s got a bunch of secrets. They aren’t the bad kind, though. I can’t tell you—Nick Fury’s gonna kick my ass one of these days for letting as many people in on _my_ secret identity as I have—but I can promise you that I know what he’s hiding and it’s not a bad thing.”

“Is he an alien? Because you _have_ to tell me if you’re sleeping with an alien.”

“Of course not. Although I can see why you’d think that. The two Asgardians I’ve met are both legendarily stubborn assholes.”

“Oh, and you have room to talk. Well, I don’t care if he is from Asgard; If he breaks your heart, I’ll break his knees.”

“I know. Hey, you’re taking this better than I figured. My fresh bruises notwithstanding.”

“Don’t lie to me again and you won’t have that problem. You’re right, though, Bucky. If I’d been paying more attention… I can’t believe I had no idea. And this is exactly the kind of damn fool thing…” Her voice is suddenly very small, a child wanting to lean on her big brother. “I’m never going to be able to stop worrying that you’re going to do something stupid and get hurt or killed, am I?”

“Bec, I could get killed crossing the street tomorrow. I’m not going to let fear stop me from doing what’s right. That’s something I learned from Steve, by the way.”

“Funny, because that sounds exactly like something Dad would say,” Becca says, leaning her head on Bucky’s metal shoulder.

“Hey, speaking of Dad, can I talk to you about some more stuff in the morning? Steve’s gonna get worried if I don’t get back soon,” Bucky says, and Steve, realizing he’ll be caught if he doesn’t beat feet, goes quickly back up the stairs. By the time Bucky comes in, he’s back under the blankets, although he doesn’t pretend to be asleep. He rolls over and murmurs, “You okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good.” Bucky slides in next to him and presses his body against Steve’s. “Jesus. You’re freezing.”

“So warm me up.” Steve starts to lean into the touch, then stifles a yelp when Bucky’s metal hand touches the small of his back. “Dammit, Buck, never complain about my feet being cold again.”

Bucky’s breath is warm on Steve’s neck when he laughs. “We’re a fucking mess, the pair of us. Wouldn’t change us, though.”

“Says the guy who wants me to get a hearing aid and glasses and go to physical therapy and get my thyroid checked…”

“Steve, seriously, I’m sorry about that. I was trying to help. I didn’t know it was bugging you. And I’m still gonna get after you if you miss your meds, but I’ll try to stop being pushy about the other stuff.”

“You’re not wrong. I’d fix all of it if I could.”

“Yeah, I know, Steve, but the thing is, you don’t have to.”

Steve sighs, wishing he could feel the same. Because the thing is, saving the world from Nazis and aliens and robots is one thing. That’s always a team effort, and as SHIELD proved after he went into the ice, there are always other people to pick up the torch when you have to let it fall. And it’s not just about being an inspiration to, for instance, the kids who look at Clint’s hearing aid or Bucky’s arm or Tony’s arc reactor implant and see hope that they can overcome whatever’s holding them down. Steve’s legacy on that has a sad ending, but S.H.I.E.L.D. hid it, and rightly so; the story of Captain America, the shining beacon of hope that anybody can do anything, is still intact, maybe even better for the fact that everybody thinks Cap died a hero.

Bucky, though. Bucky, who loves him. Who’d probably give his intact right arm to cure Steve of what ails him. That’s the part that isn’t a big, abstract, glorious concept; it’s a constant low ache in his chest, somewhere between his dodgy lungs and his stuttering heart. Because he can deal with not being able to protect Bucky physically; sure, the close calls and near misses are going to send him into a spiral every time, but he loved Peggy, who put herself in just as much danger for exactly the same reasons, and in spite of how it ended, he’s never regretted taking that chance.

But chronic illness, that’s something different from dying _for_ something. He’s been where Bucky is on that front. He remembers every minute of losing his mother, from the first day he realized the cough wasn’t going away all the way through her long, slow decline. He remembers trying everything there was to try, every doctor, every medicine, every last-ditch old wives’ tale and snake oil cure, and it still wasn’t enough. And now Bucky is living with the same constant background fear that one day, his best won’t be enough, either. Because of course, that’s what’s behind all the nagging about specialists and treatments, scans and meds, about that too-casual request Bucky made for the customized pockets and pouches on his uniform that Tony thinks are for knives and grenades, but that are really just so he can always carry a spare inhaler and an epi pen, just in case.

Because that’s what you do when you love somebody. You protect them.

Under the blankets, Steve’s hands clench into fists. _Yes, Becca Barnes-Proctor,_ he thinks, _whatever I’m doing to help your brother, I’m going to keep doing it. I’m going to find a way to protect Bucky Barnes._

_No matter what._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Steve, stop running directly toward the terrible idea!
> 
> “Irrresistibly charming” line inspired by [this;](http://beradan.tumblr.com/post/141368901399/poppunkpixieprince-imagine-ur-otp) Steve’s lack of driver’s license and response inspired by [this.](http://spitandvinegar.tumblr.com/post/141537430783/ok-so-we-all-know-that-the-answer-to-where-did)


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The one where Bucky finds out.

The summer of 2013 is a good time to be Bucky Barnes. Sure, he’s basically the same person he was before he was an Avenger, which means he still has good days and bad days, days when his brain won’t stop or won’t start. But the good days outnumber the bad ones, and he’s helping people, and he has friends who’ve got his back no matter what, and he has Steve. Honestly, it’s more than he ever could have asked for.

He comes off medical leave in August, just in time for the Avengers to go up against some jokers calling themselves the Wrecking Crew. They do some modest damage in lower Manhattan before the team arrives, but the criminals are locked down quickly and efficiently. S.H.I.E.L.D. asks them to follow up that success with a hunt for an outfit calling themselves the Serpent Society, who turn out to be pretty skilled operators in spite of the stupid name; they lead the Avengers on a long chase through the docks and back alleys of Madripoor before they’re finally captured and turned over to the U.N. for trial.

“I really feel that we contribute to making the world a safer and more welcoming place,” Clint says, when Bucky pulls him out of a dumpster behind a casino, reeking of rotten fish and grinning.

The mission after that is a rough one. Fury sends them to Boston to bring in a guy who’s been doing gamma ray experiments and has, in Tony’s parlance, Hulked out. They neutralize him and hand him over to S.H.I.E.L.D.’s science division, who are hopeful that he’s not too far gone for a full cure, but Bruce goes into a spiral after he learns that the ‘monster’ was actually a fresh-faced MIT grad student who was trying to replicate the original Hulk experiments. “Still think I need to strut?” he snaps at Tony during the debriefing, and suddenly there’s a flash of green in his eyes and a charged feeling in the air, like one spark will blow everything to high heaven.

Bucky feels his breathing speed up. If Bruce loses it in this tiny conference room, they’d be safer if a bomb went off. He’s tracing the exit routes with his eyes, trying to work out a strategy to at least get Steve out safely, when Steve says abruptly, “Sit the fuck down, Banner. This isn’t about you and I don’t have time for your shit right now.”

Bucky stares at him in horror, and even Natasha raises one perfectly curved eyebrow, but the words seem to shock Bruce back to reality; he stops, blinks, says, “Sorry, I… I’m sorry,” and drops back into his seat.

Tony looks at both of them for a moment, hovering between horror and admiration. “Rogers, buddy, next time give us a warning when you’re gonna go up against somebody bigger than you,” he says. “You could give a guy a heart attack.”

“When you’re my size, everybody’s bigger than you,” Steve says wryly.

“Now that is just not true,” Bucky says to the ceiling. “And I should know. Did I ever tell you about my first real boyfriend, way back in high school? Talk about a disappointing prom night.”

There’s a brief, horrified silence, and then, just when Bucky is thinking he’s finally pushed it too far, Steve snorts and covers his face with his hands, shoulders shaking in his I’m-going-to-hell-for-thinking-this-is-funny laugh. Then everybody, even Bruce, loses it for a couple minutes, and Fury calls them a bunch of children, which Bucky doesn’t debate. At least now if anybody notices that he’s also a little flushed, they’ll think it’s from laughing and not from how unbelievably hot it gets him when Steve takes charge like that.

Which is why it’s so frustrating later, when he’s got Steve halfway out of the reinforced S.H.I.E.L.D. flight suit that serves as his uniform and Steve says, “I feel terrible about what I did to Bruce.”

“You’re kidding me.” Bucky pauses, hands on the flight suit's buckle. _“That’s_ what you’re thinking about right now?”

“Not about what I said,” Steve continues doggedly. “I had to snap him out of it. But I’m sorry I sent him into the field to begin with. We needed the muscle, but he’s going to have a hard time getting past the fact that we weren’t taking down a supervillain, just a confused kid.”

“Bruce will be fine.” Bucky’s not actually convinced of that, but he desperately wants Steve to do anything else with his mouth besides talking right now.

“This time, sure, but next time? And he’s not the only one on the team who’s unstable. Tony—”

“Gaaah,” Bucky groans. “So tell Fury you want some more Avengers, whatever, just please stop talking about Tony Stark while I’m taking your pants off.”

Steve tilts his head to the side and looks at him. “More Avengers?”

“Yeah, S.H.I.E.L.D. keeps files on people with weird abilities. That’s how they found me. If we had a bigger team, you could bench anybody who’s too close to a particular mission. Now would you please just—what?”

Steve is staring at him, dumbstruck. “Buck, you’re brilliant,” he says.

“And here I thought you saw me as just another pretty face.”

“No, I mean—there was something I was looking for in the S.H.I.E.L.D. files, and I couldn’t find it. I just realized I was going about it all wrong. I shouldn’t have been looking in the files; I should have been talking to the _people_ in the files.” Steve kisses him, long enough and hard enough that for once, Bucky’s the one who’s a little out of breath when he pulls away. “Thanks.”

Bucky has no idea what that was about, but it shuts Steve up, so he’ll take it.

 

Steve goes on a couple of recruiting trips in early autumn, usually taking either Clint or Natasha with him as backup and bodyguard. It turns out S.H.I.E.L.D. has a lot of files on what they call “potential powered individuals,” but there are more misses than hits in those files. There’s a school in upstate New York that’s supposedly run by a psychic or something, but that doesn’t pan out; Clint’s got a promising young archer he’s working with, but she’s not interested in going full-time; there’s a high school girl in Jersey City who seems to have legitimate stretchy and shrinky powers, and Steve fights hard for her, but Fury nixes hiring a minor. Tony even lobbies to get his buddy Rhodey (who Bucky knows as Colonel Rhodes of the U.S. Air Force, and who occasionally pilots one of Tony’s armors under the codename War Machine) put on permanent loan to the Avengers, the way Clint and Natasha are from S.H.I.E.L.D., but Bucky could’ve told him that the military doesn’t like to share. So, after some fast talking and Tony _maybe_ breaching a few classified government design files, it seems like there’s only one way to go.

In October, they debut Sam Wilson as the newest Avenger. They give him his old Army call sign, Falcon, and Bucky and Tony take turns talking him up at the press conference—which would be awful if he wasn’t reading from a teleprompter, but it turns out he’s done himself a favor in that the S.H.I.E.L.D. publicists are _firm_ that he’s not allowed to go off script again—and then Sam swoops out of the sky and does about eight barrel rolls before he drops onto the stage, sticking the landing to thunderous applause. Bucky tries not to visibly shudder; he doesn’t mind heights, wouldn’t be much of a sniper if he did, but freefall is a different matter. But he’s happy to see Sam going back into the field. Sam is smart, he’s trained, he’s way more stable than most of the team—Bucky includes himself in that—and, importantly, he takes absolutely none of Tony’s shit. He really is the obvious choice.

The surprise comes a week later, when Sam shows up to the regular Tuesday night team dinner not just as an Avenger, but as Natasha’s date. “What?” she says, somehow managing to head Tony off before he gets a word in. “It’s never occurred to you that I have a life outside S.H.I.E.L.D.?”

“No, I just always assumed you and Katniss were a thing,” Tony says, cocking his head at Clint.

“Oh, come on,” Clint says, spinning an arrow on one fingertip. “I’m way out of Natasha’s league.” And of course everybody laughs—including Bucky, who knows that Clint is deliberately keeping his thing with Laura on the QT—but Bucky does grab the two of them later and offer legitimate congratulations. Natasha may still not be convinced about the usefulness of romance in general, but she looks content, and Sam looks thrilled, and they both deserve a little happiness.

 

In late October the weather turns sharply cooler, and Steve catches a cold that turns into bronchitis and is sick in bed for the better part of three weeks. He hates being coddled when he’s sick—it makes him feel weak and burdensome—so Bucky fights down his usual caretaking instincts and adopts a snarky tone, growling at Steve to _get the fuck back in bed, you stubborn asshole, I’m so done with your shenanigans, you’re gonna get better if it kills us both,_ which seems to cheer Steve up immensely. But he still rents cheesy old movies he thinks Steve might like, and brings home dumb little presents, with mixed results (Steve’s enthralled by the Magritte art book, for instance, but surprisingly baffled by the Iron Man Pez dispenser), and at one point he even tries making chicken soup from a Depression-era recipe Jarvis finds for him in the digitized archives of the _Saturday Evening Post_. Okay, so _maybe_ it ends with a general panic when the other Avengers assume the Tower is under attack, days of griping from Tony that “Barnes is the reason we can’t have nice things,” and a lifetime ban on pressure cookers from the 76 th floor, but when Steve runs in and finds Bucky with the vibranium shield in his hands, soup in his hair, and a horrified expression while he stares up at the pressure cooker lid that he’s just deflected into the ceiling, he laughs so hard that Bucky decides to call Project Comfort Food a qualified success.

One rainy afternoon toward the end of the third week, Pepper drops by with a get-well card and a care package of fresh fruit and fancy herbal teas. Bucky welcomes her in but tells her that Steve is asleep, and her expression changes. “The truth is,” she says, setting the basket on the table and taking a seat on the sofa, “I’m also here to talk to you, Bucky. I wanted to tell you that I’m moving in with Tony.”

“About fucking time,” Bucky says, genuinely pleased. “I don’t care if it’s a private jet, flying back and forth twice a week has to suck. And it’ll be great to have you around the Tower more often. We should do a movie night.”

“I’m moving into Tony’s house in Malibu,” Pepper corrects him, gently. “But don’t worry, Tony will still be an Avenger. If there’s any trouble, his suit can make the flight back here in under two hours.”

“You’re leaving New York for California? Pep, are you _sure_ you’re not being mind-controlled by any supervillains right now?” It doesn’t get the smile he expects, so he asks, quietly, “Why?”

“Officially, because it’s better for me if I’m closer to the Stark Industry headquarters. But between us, the Malibu house is the closest thing Tony has to a sanctuary, and he can’t keep waking up every morning underneath what used to be an alien wormhole.”

“Oh, fuck,” Bucky says, as several things about the last couple of months become clear. “I never realized… He must think about it every time he looks up, and he’s a guy who _flies._ Christ, no wonder he’s such a wreck.”

“You’ve noticed?” Pepper says, raising an eyebrow.

“I’d have to be pretty oblivious not to recognize PTSD. And there’s the drinking.” Tony hasn’t shown up _drunk_ to any Avengers training sessions, exactly, but Bucky is sure Steve’s going to have words with Tony about his general state once he’s up and about again. “Pep, I’m really sorry to say this, but Tony’s gonna fall apart eventually. I tried to talk to him a couple times, but he’s not gonna listen to anybody until he hits bottom. And it’s really, really gonna suck for both of you when he does.”

“I’m going into this with my eyes open,” Pepper says. “I know the odds are against us, but I have to try.”

“I know.” Bucky reaches out to squeeze her hand. “I just hope he wises up before he drives you away, Pep. I know Tony doesn’t exactly make it easy to love him at the best of times.”

“He really doesn’t.” Just like that, Pepper melts. She’s like Steve in that way: it’s a gift whenever she lets you see a moment of real vulnerability.

“Call me if you need backup,” he says. “Trust me on this, you’re not doing him any favors if you don’t take care of yourself first, and you really don’t have to do it alone.”

“I’ll take you up on that if I need to.” Pepper rubs her eyes and is about to say something else when the flatscreen on the wall suddenly flares to life.

“Your pardon, Miss Potts, Sergeant,” Jarvis says from the ceiling, “but I thought you should be informed of this straightaway.”

 

The Mandarin is on TV again. This time the explosion takes out part of a shopping mall in Dallas, while the picture cuts in and out from pictures of the blast to images of his gun-toting militia, all overlaid with a long rant about American consumerism addressed directly to the President, like the challenge that it is. They’re both glued to the screen until long after the news anchors come back on the air, but once again, nobody really knows anything, and eventually Bucky picks up the remote and clicks the television off.

“I need to get going before they shut down air traffic, if they haven’t already,” Pepper says, pulling out her phone; she’s already on the line with someone from Stark Industries before the elevator doors shut.

Bucky closes the door to the foyer, locks it, and sits on the couch, staring at nothing, until the bedroom door opens and Steve wanders out, wrapped in a blanket and yawning. “Was somebody here, Buck? I heard—” he begins, and stops. “What happened?”

“Another Mandarin attack. Dallas. Eleven people died. They were,” Bucky takes a deep breath, “Christmas shopping.”

“My God,” says Steve.

“That’s not the worst part. They’re not releasing the names of some of the victims.” Without looking at Steve, Bucky makes himself say it: “That probably means they were kids.”

There are so many words hanging in the air between the two of them that Bucky can’t say out loud: _I’m sorry, you were right, we should have gone after him the first time he hurt someone, what if it had been Becca or her kids, I hid behind S.H.I.E.L.D. orders and did nothing which means I_ let _this happen, and I don’t know how to ask you to forgive me._

Steve gives him a long, measuring look. Then he sits down and tugs Bucky over until he's lying with his head on Steve’s lap. Steve wants him to know he isn’t blaming him, which is good, because Bucky is blaming himself more than enough. “I have to keep reminding myself it isn’t Pearl Harbor,” Steve says eventually.

“I have to keep reminding myself it isn’t 9/11,” Bucky replies. “I wish I could go donate blood. At least it would feel like I was doing something.”

“You can go if you want. I’ll be fine.”

“No, I can’t,” Bucky sighs, “and you can’t either, because there are some really _stupid_ and homophobic rules about who’s allowed to give blood nowadays. And that’s assuming they even get as far as asking about my sex life. I went with my friend Theresa one time, just as moral support, and they started freaking out about the arm before I even got to tell them I wasn’t there to donate. Decided they could disqualify me under _body modification,_ if you can believe that.”

“Well, if it’s any consolation, I’m already off the list because of the pernicious anemia,” Steve says, with exactly the same amount of bitterness in his tone. “You know, after the experiment, they used to take my blood all the time. Thought they’d be able to make vaccines or cure diseases with it, even if they couldn’t recreate the serum. Now I can’t give it away.”

Bucky looks up at him. It’s not like Steve to talk about the serum if he can avoid it. Maybe he’s finally starting to come to terms with losing it. But before he can ask, Steve squeezes Bucky’s left hand and kisses the metal knuckles. He can barely feel it, but that’s not the point; Steve is reminding him that _he_ doesn’t care about the arm, no matter what the American Red Cross has to say. “They—” he begins, and pauses to cough for a moment before he finishes, “They gotta send us after the Mandarin sooner or later, right?”

“Yeah, they do,” Bucky says. But he looks at his phone, which is resolutely refusing to sound the call to assemble, and knows he’s lying.

 

Steve is mostly recovered by the time they head out to Becca’s place for Thanksgiving, but by then, Bucky is banged up from another Avengers fight. Which involved a giant lizard. A _lizard._ What _even,_ Bucky wants to know, and so far, even the S.H.I.E.L.D. lab hasn’t been able to tell him.

“I saw the clip on Youtube,” Becca whispers at him furiously, in the kitchen. He’s supposedly helping her with the turkey, but really, she’s helping him ice his bruises while the rest of the family is distracted. “You were being an idiot. Why do you even have a shield if you’re going to throw it away all the time?”

“Hey, I don’t tell you how to do your job. Besides, that move looks amazing on TV.”

“Yeah,” Becca snorts, “that newscaster from Channel One certainly seems to like it.”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “Hey, did you know she got fined for obstructing a government operation?”

“Did she really?”

“Yeah. Her network paid it, though. They got a lot of publicity out of that story. And then she somehow got my number and called to ask me out.”

“What!” Becca squeaks. “What did you do?”

“Told her I was flattered but I’ve already got a partner, obviously. And _then_ she said to bring him along. Honestly. Just ’cause I'm bi, people make the weirdest assumptions about what I’m into. Although in retrospect, maybe she was trying to get me to give her an exclusive. ‘Captain America’s lover: secretive Avenger tells all.’ I’m really starting to understand why Superman likes having a secret identity.”

“You’re such a nerd. All right, it’s been fifteen minutes, so throw the icepack back in the freezer and go rescue your boyfriend before Lizzie talks him deaf in his other ear.” Becca pauses. “Are you going to tell her about the Captain America thing?”

Bucky rolls his eyes. “I’d have to be able to get a word in edgewise to tell Liz anything.” The second-youngest Barnes kid is going to get a big chunk of her student loans paid off as this year’s Christmas gift, though, thanks to the Avenger salary he’s been quietly socking away all year, and Meg, who didn’t make it home for Thanksgiving because she’s studying abroad in Norway, is about to get a Stark Foundation grant that she doesn’t know she applied for. Which reminds him… “What?” he says, turning his attention back to Becca.

“I said, I worry that you don’t have enough people to talk to about your double life as a superhero.”

“I have lots of people. The other Avengers. Steve. You.”

“Steve and I can’t really know what it’s like, though.”

Bucky smiles. “Steve understands better than you’d think, Bec. Speaking of which, could you buy me five more minutes? I’m trying to work out a surprise for him for Christmas, and I could use a distraction.”

“Sure, but you owe me,” says Becca, heading back toward the living room.

Bucky does owe her, and _her_ Christmas surprise is going to be getting her car loan paid off and a nice contribution to each of her kids’ college funds, but that’s beside the point. “Thanks,” he says, and steps outside onto the porch.

He’s not really expecting an answer, so he’s surprised when Tony picks up on the second ring. From the faint clank of metal in the background, he’s in his workshop, either revolutionizing the world again or yelling at the robot that sweeps the floor. “Hey hey hey, Buckingham Palace,” he says. “How’s your day going? Enjoying the celebration of gluttony and the subjugation of indigenous peoples?”

Bucky smiles, because Tony sounds good. Manic and annoying, but good. Maybe Pepper was right, and Malibu is stabilizing him. “Having a great day with my loved ones, thanks. And you’re really scraping the bottom of the barrel for nicknames, Tones.”

“Hey, there are limits to even my creativity. You gotta work with me here, buddy, give me some new material.”

“Okay, well, keeping in mind that you asked for it, I do have a question for you. Do you know the going market rate for vibranium?”

“Why? Thinking of pawning the shield, Tommy, getting your guitar out of hock?”

“I’m serious, Stark. According to the internet, I only need about ten grams of it. And you have to promise me you won’t tell anybody about this.”

“I solemnly swear I am up to no good,” Tony says, intrigued. “Sure, Padfoot, I’ll have Jarvis do a price check, but only if you tell me what you need a weirdly specific amount of the rarest metal on the planet _for.”_

Bucky takes a deep breath. He still can’t believe Tony Stark is on his short list of people he’d trust with something as big as this. “Well,” he says, “if I want Steve to say yes, I guess I’m gonna need one hell of an engagement ring.”

There’s a brief silence on the other end of the line, and then Tony says, “Son of a bitch. I owe Pepper two hundred dollars.”

“Uh, I’m sorry,” Bucky says, “I’m not surprised that you’re betting on my love life, but just for reference, was the bet on which of us would ask first, or…?”

“I had a hundred on Steve asking first and a hundred on the two of you living in sin forever,” Tony says. “No offense, buddy, I prefer the long odds. I can tell you that you’re looking at a little more than two months’ salary if you go the vibranium route, though. In the hundreds-of-thousands range of ‘more.’”

“Shit.” Bucky pointedly does _not_ think about how much the shield, which he and Clint literally took turns riding down a staircase like a sled once just to see if they could, must be worth by that logic.

“Hey, never fear, Buckaroo—”

“Yeah, we’re not doing that one.”

“—Stark Industries is here for all your matrimonial needs,” Tony finishes smoothly. “You bring me your shield, I’ll find a way to get ten grams of vibranium out of it without wrecking the balance. Or better yet, let me take enough metal off your arm for the ring and give it a vibranium plating, really make it about both of you. What do you say?”

“Jesus, Tony, that’s…” Bucky swallows hard. “Wow.”

“Believe it or not, Barnes, I’m not entirely clueless in the romance department. You want it in red, white, and blue, or is that too much? By the way, the right answer here is, ‘Whatever you say, Tones, you’re clearly the only one with any design sense.’”

Bucky grins. “Standard silver, please. If I can get to Malibu in the next week or two, can you finish the ring in time for Christmas Eve?”

“Barnes, I have one of the best machine shops on the planet in my basement. I’ll need forty minutes, tops.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

“Don’t mention it. I look forward to the two of you smashing flag-colored cake into each other’s faces at your reception. Okay, Tiny Tim, go back to cooking the goose for the family and God bless us, every one.”

“Wrong holiday, but happy Thanksgiving to you, too, Tony,” Bucky says, before he goes back inside.

Steve, it turns out, doesn’t need rescuing. “Your sister’s great,” he says, when Bucky expresses his surprise. “She only talks so much because she has a lot of things she’s passionate about. Do you know how much community activism she does? I wish I could hire her for S.H.I.E.L.D., because we need people with that kind of commitment.” Bucky leans down and kisses him, and he blinks. “What was that for?”

“For always seeing the best in everybody,” Bucky says. “And because I like you, punk.”

“Eeyeew, it’s like when Mom and Dad kiss,” Emily mutters disgustedly from the corner, where she’s coloring in one of Steve’s sketches with her crayons, and Bucky decides he couldn’t possibly be any happier than he is in this moment.

Which, of course, is why he should know that it’s all about to go to shit.

 

“Okay, this looks bad,” Clint Barton says, when Bucky walks into the holding cell.

“Damn skippy it does,” Bucky hisses, beyond furious, as he strides over to the bench where Steve is sprawled, head pillowed on one arm. He barely kept it together on the way over, in the back of one of Tony’s chauffeured Towncars. Would’ve been a lot faster to take the bike, but Clint told him to bring a car, and now he sees why: Steve’s in no shape for riding. From the blood on his face and shirt, he’s guessing Steve’s in no shape for walking, either. “You have one job, and that’s to protect your team and have our backs, and instead you’re dragging my boyfriend into dive bars where fights get started? I should call Natasha on you. I should call _Laura_ on you.”

“Hey, now,” Clint says, eyes wide, “let’s not go straight to the nuclear option.”

Bucky rolls his eyes at him and kneels by the bench. “Steve. _Stevie._ Hey, babe, wake up and let me see how bad it is, okay?”

Steve doesn’t move until Bucky carefully raises his eyelid; then he flinches and pulls away with a groan. “S’ry, Buck,” he mumbles, while Bucky inspects the damage. “...’nna be really mad, huh?”

“I’m not mad,” Bucky says. Steve’s nose doesn’t seem to be broken, but there’s a dark bruise coming up on the side of his face and he’s going to have a hell of a shiner in the morning, and that’s just what Bucky can see. “Goddammit, Clint. How did you two wind up in a police station instead of going straight to the hospital? If there was ever a time to play the ‘I’m an Avenger’ card, it was now.”

“I did play that card! Why do you think we’re not being charged with anything?”

“Why would they charge you? You said you were breaking up the fight when the cops showed up.”

“I said we were in a bar, and I was breaking up a fight,” Clint says pointedly. “Look at your boyfriend and ask yourself why the word ‘we’ wasn’t used twice in that sentence.”

Bucky stares at him for a long moment before he says, “You gotta be fucking kidding me.”

“Knew you’d be mad,” Steve mumbles, before he passes out again.

 

One good thing about being an Avenger is that the medical supply cabinet is always well-stocked. Bucky mutters every obscenity he knows in both English and Russian while he cleans Steve’s cuts and scrapes, undresses him, and puts him in bed, propped up on his side, with an ice pack over his swollen eye and an order to Jarvis to monitor his vitals, before leaving him to sleep it off.

“I’m guessing this isn’t the first time you’ve done this,” Clint says, once he’s emerged from the guest bathroom with a neat row of butterfly stitches across his temple. In the better light of the apartment, Bucky can see that he’s going to have his own set of bruises tomorrow.

“Taken care of a drunk person? No. Seeing Steve drunk, yes.” Bucky sighs heavily. “He woke up again long enough to say he’s sorry he puked on you.”

“He should be.”

“And I’m sorry I yelled at you.”

“You should be. Although, let’s be fair, I am usually the fuckup of the group.”

“You wanna tell me what happened?”

“Sure.” Clint flops down on the couch. “So we hit another dead end with the whole ‘recruiting powered people’ thing—”

“Wait, that’s still going on? I thought we were done once we got Sam on board.”

“No, man, Steve’s still talking to potentials, and I guess he had really high hopes for this one. Guy down in Greenwich Village, supposed to be able to do some kind of mystical energy thing. He basically ran us off, wasn’t interested. Steve went back to the house to give it one more shot, but I guess it didn’t go well, because he seemed pretty down afterward. So I said, why don’t we go get a drink before we head back to the Tower? I knew you were gonna be at the practice range with Nat tonight, and I figured, if there was something bothering him, maybe he’d open up to me about it.”

“If you think we’re having problems at home, we aren’t,” Bucky says, maybe too sharply. They aren’t, are they? He’s about to ask Steve to spend the rest of his life with him, for fuck’s sake, they’re _fine._

“Don’t get paranoid on me, Barnes. I didn’t have any idea what might be going on. Still don’t, because we never got that far. We just had a couple drinks—I figured he’d be a lightweight, but I didn’t know he hadn’t been drunk since before the serum—and I was just going to ask if everything was okay with him when a news spot came on the TV about how they’re fixing some of the damage from that lizard. Your friend the Channel One lady was on, so of course they played that clip of you, you know the one—”

“Yeah, I know the one.”

“—And then some asshole at the bar started up about—and I don’t want to offend you here, Buck, but this is a direct quote—about how it’s a sign of how much this country’s going to hell that they have a one-armed queer running around calling himself Captain America.”

Bucky blinks slowly. “Well, technically, I _am_ a one-armed queer running around calling myself Captain America.”

“Yeah, but the part where Steve lost it was, ‘If the real Cap was still alive, you can bet he’d set these goddamn liberals straight in a hurry.’”

Bucky puts his hands over his face.

“I tried to talk him down,” Clint says. “And after he started his ‘let me tell you what the real Captain America would say’ speech, I tried to talk the other guy down, and when I couldn’t talk _him_ down, I tried to get between them, but…”

“You were trying to help and got punched in the face? I’m really sorry.”

Clint shrugs. “That’s a pretty typical Wednesday night for me, actually. Hey, I’ve gotta get home and let Lucky out. Text me in the morning and let me know how Steve is, okay?”

“Yeah. And thanks, Clint. Really, thanks.”

Bucky is exhausted, but it’s too early to sleep. He shuts the door behind Clint and sits down on the sofa. Steve’s coat is on the coffee table, where he dropped it when they came in, and it reeks of booze and vomit; he should probably send it to be cleaned, he thinks, and sighs, leaning forward to empty out the pockets. Keys, check; Starkphone, check; wallet, loose change, inhaler, check, check, check. His hand falls on a familiar shape in the inside breast pocket: Steve’s leatherbound notebook, the one he uses to write down things people in the know about his situation have told him he’s missed since 1945. Or, in the case of Tony Stark, things he wants to Google for himself, since he doesn’t always trust Tony not to troll him.

Bucky shouldn’t. He knows he shouldn’t. But… he and Steve are okay, aren’t they? There can’t be anything Steve’s keeping from him, honestly. Steve is such a terrible liar.

The notebook falls open to page bookmarked by a glossy brochure. The page itself is a list, full of cross-outs and strikethroughs:

 ~~Simmons/Fitz~~  
~~Richards~~  
~~Xavier  
Foster~~  
~~Cho~~  
~~McCoy~~  
~~Strange~~  
Killian ~~~~

It’s not quite the same as Steve’s original recruiting list, although he thinks that maybe a few of those names overlap. He’ll ask Steve about it in the morning. And then he notices something. The brochure has a sticky note on the back, with a little handwritten note on it, signed _Killian,_ the only name on the list that isn’t crossed out. Bucky turns it over, recognizes it immediately as some kind of pharmaceutical ad—he leaves with a handful of these every time he goes in to get his meds adjusted—and frowns at the name on the front cover.

He and Steve know every medication the other is on; Steve insisted on that after the time nobody knew what to put on the intake forms before they took him into surgery, and anyway, Bucky refilled most of Steve’s prescriptions while he was sick. (Sure, one of Pepper’s army of assistants, or even Jarvis, could take over that stupid little task, but the truth is, he likes doing that kind of stuff for Steve, and the pharmacy is next to a great coffee shop). And this definitely isn’t a drug Steve is on, or even one that Bucky has ever heard of before.

So what the fuck is Extremis?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Auresse, the part with the newscaster is just for you. :)


	8. Chapter 8

“Bucky?” Steve stumbles into the living room, wincing at the sound of his own voice. Bucky is lying facedown on the couch with his metal fingers trailing on the floor. He doesn’t lift his head, but he stirs and rolls his left shoulder as if it aches—which it probably does, if he slept out here all night—and Steve sinks into the chair opposite him, groaning. “What happened last night?”

Bucky shrugs. “You drank, you fought, you shamed your Irish ancestors. I fished you out of the drunk tank and put you to bed.”

Steve shakes his head, and immediately regrets it. “Do we have any aspirin?”

“Medicine cabinet, next to your allergy stuff.”

Steve goes and gets himself one of the pills, chokes it down with water from the tap, and squints at his reflection in the mirror. He touches the purple bruise under his eye and adds another regret to this morning’s list. “Do you want some coffee?” he asks, returning to the living room.

“No.”

Steve raises an eyebrow at him. “Do you want an ambulance?”

Bucky makes a sound that isn’t quite a laugh. “No.”

“Are you angry?”

“About last night? No.” Bucky sighs. “I probably should be, but I’m not. You’re a grown-ass man, Steve. You want to pick fights with guys twice your size, it’s your prerogative.”

“Good,” Steve says fervently. “Because I get really tired of people acting like I’ll break if they look at me too hard. And I haven’t forgotten everything I ever knew about fighting just because I lost some muscle mass. I had that guy on the ropes before Clint got in my way.”

“I know you did,” Bucky says, and Steve, suddenly registering how ragged his voice sounds, goes to the couch and kneels beside him.

“Hey,” he says. “Are you okay? What’s going on?”

Bucky lifts his head and looks at him, hollow-eyed. “Steve, do you trust me?”

“With my life. You know that.”

“Do I? Because, you know, it just seems like somebody who trusts me would’ve told me about this.” Bucky picks up the Starkpad on the table and flicks it toward the projector that it seems like Tony’s built one of into every flat surface in the Tower, and suddenly, Steve is in the middle of a circle of bright blue holograms, silent videos, scrolling words. Over all of it, a word floats like a ghost: _Extremis._

Steve opens his mouth, then shuts it again.

“I know,” Bucky says tonelessly, “I went through your stuff. Sorry. It really sucks to find out your boyfriend’s sneaking around behind your back.”

Steve closes his eyes, then opens them slowly. “I didn’t tell you,” he says, “because I hadn’t decided if I was doing anything about it. Extremis was always going to be a last resort. You have enough to deal with already that I didn’t want to make you worry about something that might not even happen.”

“Hadn’t decided, huh?” Bucky repeats. “Have you decided now?”

Steve looks him in the eye. “No.”

“Well, I’m sure whatever you do, it’ll be the right thing. That’s kind of your deal, right? ‘I’m Steve Rogers, and I always do the right thing. Lied to the draft board five times because going off to fight Nazis was the right thing. Disobeyed orders in a war zone because putting my life in danger with no backup was the right thing. Didn’t tell Bucky I was thinking about doing a completely unregulated experimental medical procedure because extremely selective honesty is fine, but God forbid I should _worry_ him.’”

This wouldn’t be nearly as bad, Steve thinks, if Bucky were actually furious. But he just looks, well, _crushed._ Maybe this is what people mean when they say they wish he’d yell at them instead of just looking disappointed. “Bucky,” he says, determined to be honest, “I love you. And I know you love me the way I am. But you have to understand that this, this body, it won’t let me do what I need to do. When I got the serum, it was the first time in my life I’d ever felt _right._ And when I found out there might be a way to get it back… I know the serum only ever worked for one person, but I _was_ that one person. Why shouldn’t it work again?”

“You know, Stevie, I could almost buy that if I hadn’t found this.” Bucky pushes himself off the couch, steps into the circle of holograms, and reaches for one of the folders. He flicks it open and brings up a video of a woman with short red hair, wearing a tank top, in an interview room somewhere, talking about why she should be chosen for the Extremis program. Steve has seen it, of course; ever since the first time he talked to Killian, he’s been shuffling through these files on and off, trying to make up his mind. But then the camera pulls back, and he realizes why Bucky chose this particular file.

The woman’s right arm has been amputated just below her shoulder.

“Bucky, this isn’t what you think,” he says, but the video is already cutting to a shot of the woman strapped down on a table, chest heaving, while the camera pans in on her arm. The first time he watched this, he could hardly believe it—and Killian was quick to emphasize that it doesn’t work for everybody, that they’ve never tested it on someone like Steve because there’s never _been_ a situation like Steve’s. But Killian was obviously proud as hell of these results, and he should be. Because in front of them, the woman’s missing arm is _growing back._ It’s slow, and it looks excruciatingly painful—Killian gave some vague explanation about cellular energy, but whatever the reason, her skin is blistering with heat before it heals over. In the video, she screams silently, the sound muted, but every time she thrashes, there’s a little more of her arm to slam against the table she’s strapped to.

Steve’s been through this once already, and he isn’t afraid of pain; even at the worst point inside Erskine’s machine, he knew he could get through it. When he first saw this, he thought Extremis held all the promise of the serum and the Stark Expo and the _Astounding Science Fiction_ magazines he read before the war. He thought about his own body going through this process, getting stronger, being _restored._

He didn’t think about what it would look like to Bucky.

 “See, the thing is,” Bucky says hoarsely, “the thing is, Steve, I’ve been telling myself that what happened to you is different than what happened to me. That you’re dealing with about five different chronic illnesses, and you can’t really say _disorder_ or _dysmorphia_ when you’re trying to fix things that could actually kill you. But, Jesus Christ, the fact that you got all self-righteous at me when I asked you to get a hearing aid, and then I find out you’re looking into _limb regeneration_ —”

“That isn’t fair,” Steve says. “I haven’t asked you to do anything. This is about _me_ being able to make a difference in the world. If I see a situation pointed south, I can’t just sit by and do nothing. Sometimes I wish I could, but—”

“Bullshit,” says Bucky. “You’re not thinking about anything except your own damn pride.” He won’t even look at Steve now. “Look, I know the metal arm is weird and ugly and gross—”

“I _never_ said that.”

“—But maybe,” Bucky continues, insistent, “maybe it also reminds me that I survived something awful and got through it. And we haven’t even talked about the fact that this Extremis thing works by changing your brain chemistry. I know my head is pretty fucked up in some ways, but I’m still proud of how hard I’ve worked to get past that. I wouldn’t wish it on anybody, but maybe it’s like your bone conditioning, you know? Maybe I’m stronger where I got broken. I don't have to like my scars to know they're part of who I am. Maybe a lot of who I am. And if you’re willing to do this—” He makes a gesture that takes in all the files on the Extremis project. “—because you have to fix yourself, then how long can you live with me if I stay broken?”

Steve looks at Bucky for a long, silent moment. Then he says, “Jarvis, buddy, you there?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Delete all files on the Extremis project,” Steve says. “Delete the backups. Delete the _backups_ of the backups. And send a note to Aldrich Killian that says thanks but no thanks, I decided I’m not interested in his program.”

Bucky takes a deep breath. “Jarvis, hold off on that a minute,” he says, and then, “Look, don’t make a promise you’re gonna resent later because you don’t want to fight about it. You broke my trust, Steve. I’m not just gonna forget about that because you make some grand gesture.”

“That’s not what I’m trying to do,” Steve says. “Believe it or not, Buck, I really am trying to do the right thing. And I know it’s not the right thing if it ends up hurting you.” After a beat, he adds, “And besides, when have you ever known me not to want to get in a fight?”

There’s a long silence, and Bucky finally breaks it with a huff. “You’re a punk, Rogers,” he says.

“I know. Can I hug you?”

“Yeah.”

Steve wraps his arms around Bucky, and Bucky responds by squeezing him so tightly that he gasps. “Ow. Watch the bruises.”

“I said it was your prerogative to be stupid, not that I wouldn’t make you regret it,” Bucky says, but he loosens his grip. “Do you really feel like you’re in the wrong body?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says. “Sometimes. Less when I’m with you, I guess. And don’t tell me I need therapy. About six S.H.I.E.L.D. psychiatrists have already told me I need to start taking the world as it is, not the way I want it to be.”

“I swear to God, sometimes I think half the people working for S.H.I.E.L.D. are secretly evil,” Bucky says, exasperated. “To be fair, though, after the Army, I quit on three therapists before I found one I didn’t want to punch. Sam says that happens a lot. Taking a while to find a good therapist, I mean, not the punching. And I… I’m not saying I’m against you looking at other options, as long as you _told_ me about them. If the science bros came up with a new serum, that would be one thing. But Extremis… it just seems too good to be true. And there’s definitely something off about this Killian guy. I don’t trust him.”

Steve gives him a thin smile. It’s not the time to tell Bucky that Extremis is the only lead that’s shown the slightest bit of promise yet. “But you do trust Tony?”

“Well, sometimes. When he’s sober. And when Bruce is double-checking his work. And when I can see where both of his hands are.”

There’s a ding from Jarvis, the AI’s equivalent of a polite cough. “Your pardon, sirs, but Captain Barnes has an incoming call from Miss Potts.”

“Jesus, Jarvis, you know you’re allowed to call me Bucky.” Bucky glances at the clock. “Isn’t it like four in the morning in California?”

“It is 4:41 A.M. Pacific Standard Time, sir.”

Bucky cuts his eyes to Steve, who nods. “Put her through,” he says, and the Extremis holograms vanish, replaced by a photo of Pepper and the words _Video Not Available._ “Hey, Pep. What’s going on?”

“Bucky,” Pepper says, and Steve sits up a little straighter when he realizes why she turned off the camera: she’s obviously been crying. “Do you remember when you said I should call you if I couldn’t do this anymore?”

Bucky’s face falls. “What did Tony do? Is he okay? Are _you_ okay?”

“I’m okay right now. I’m not sure about Tony. Last night he… It’s hard to explain over the phone. I know this is a huge imposition, but—”

“Do you want me to come out there for a couple days?”

The relief is evident in Pepper’s voice. “Could you? I thought about asking Sam, but…”

“But when Tony realizes you’re bringing in a certified therapist who deals with PTSD cases all the time, he’ll go into full ‘how dare you try to help me’ mode,” Bucky says. “Whereas, if I show up, I’m just taking him up on some work he said he’d do on my arm. And then maybe I hang out for some bro time in the garage, see if I can get him talking.”

“Yes.” Pepper makes no attempt to hide her relief. “Thank you, Bucky.”

“Don’t mention it. He’s an Avenger and you might as well be. We gotta have each other’s backs. Hang in there, okay? I’ll see you in a couple hours.” Bucky disconnects the call and looks at Steve. “I have to—”

“I know. Should I go with you?”

Bucky hesitates just long enough for Steve to know what’s coming, and brace himself, before he says, “Maybe it’s not the worst thing if we both just take a couple days to process?”

Steve forces himself to smile, so he can pretend that didn’t hurt. “Well,” he says, raising his hand to his swollen face, “at least I’ll be pretty again the next time you see me.”

Bucky almost smiles for real at that. “Try not to do anything _else_ stupid until I get back,” he says.

Steve can’t bring himself to make the usual reply. “Be careful, Bucky.”

“Hey, it’s just California, not Latveria. No supervillains there, just one screwed-up billionaire genius with a sentient computer and like thirty flying suits of armor. What could possibly go wrong?”

 

Bucky has to hand it to Pepper: the private jet is actually pretty awesome. Of course, that could just be his impression because he gets to sleep through most of the flight. The last sixteen hours have left him emotionally drained. But now that it’s out in the open, at least they can start dealing with it. It’s like some invisible tension has released that he wasn’t even aware of, and he sleeps better than he has in weeks, until the flight attendant wakes him up when they’re on descent into Camarillo.

He turns his cell phone on while the pilot shuts down the engines, and there’s already a series of texts from Steve:

**I’m so sorry I hurt you, Bucky.**  
**I love you.**  
**I want us to machete through this.**  
**make it**  
**MAKE IT through this**  
**stupid auto correct!**  
**Bucky please don’t try to machete your way through this.**

Bucky grins in spite of himself, and texts back, **Too late.** And Steve, the dork, must be literally waiting by the phone, because the little typing-text bubble pops up immediately, followed by the message,

**You’re the only person who really sees me, I think.**

And a moment later, that’s followed by another:

**But you’re not the only one who’s scared of losing the person you love.**

Bucky looks at it for a long moment. Steve is such a weird contradiction, layers of stubbornness and prickly defenses wrapped around a painfully earnest soul that will break your heart every time you catch a goddamn glimpse of it. It’s what Erskine saw when he chose Steve for the serum, it’s what Carter saw when she pushed him to rescue the 107th, and it’s the reason that as raw as Bucky might feel right now, he’s still going to have Tony Stark make him that ring. **You’re not getting rid of me that easy,** he types back, as carefully as he would if he were hand-writing a letter to his lover on the homefront. **I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.**

Then he opens the airplane door to take a look at Malibu.

His first impression is, _Well, this is just wrong._ Oh, he knew _objectively_ that California was hot all year round, but when he got on the plane in New York, it was snowing, the way it’s _supposed_ to in December. Now it’s eighty degrees with the sun beating down overhead, and the airstrip is surrounded by palm trees. And Tony, a native Manhattanite, actually feels safer here? It’s downright unnatural. He turns back at the airplane door to swap his hoodie and long-sleeved Henley for a T-shirt, and also pops on a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses for good measure, before he hoists his duffel bag on his metal shoulder and heads toward the car parked on the tarmac. Apparently Tony doesn’t just have a private jet, he has a whole private runway. Bucky already knew he had a driver. “Hey, Happy,” he calls to Hogan, who immediately comes forward and tries to take his bag (there’s a brief, wordless struggle over it which, obviously, the guy with the metal arm wins). “I thought you weren’t driving for Tony anymore. Thought you were Pepper’s head of security now.”

“I can still pick a friend up at the airport, can’t I? Besides, you’re, y’know, _you,”_ Happy says, gesturing at the shield, which is looped over Bucky’s right arm. “We’re not gonna send you some hack who maybe lets your secret identity leak.”

 Happy’s one of the most straightforward people Bucky knows, which is why he gets right to the point. “So Pepper says she’s pretty worried about Tony,” he says, sliding into the passenger seat.

“Heh. We all are, pal. He’s spending all his time in his workshop these days. Only time he leaves is when Rhodey or Pepper drags him out. And do you know how many of those suits he’s built? He’s got them in the basement. They’re wearing _party hats,”_ Happy says, as if this part particularly offends him. “The worst part is, he’s ignoring Pepper. She’s the best thing that’s ever happened to him, and this Killian guy’s going to swoop in and steal her if he doesn’t do something about it.”

Bucky sits up straight. “Did you say Killian?”

“Yeah, guy’s from some tech startup, uh, Advanced Idea Mechanics. I don’t trust him.”

“I don’t either,” Bucky says grimly. Coincidences like this just don’t happen. The guy had Steve listening to some elaborate spin about—well, about what’s admittedly a pretty impressive piece of biotechnology, but why Steve? Does he know who Steve really is, and if so, how? And now he’s lurking around another Avenger? Something’s seriously not right here. “Are you keeping tabs on him?”

“If I say yes, are you gonna tell me to take it down a notch?” Happy says, in the voice of someone who’s already been burned.

“No,” Bucky says, “I’m gonna say I think that’s smart. And if he comes around again, I want to get a look at him.” Happy looks at him, sizing him up, and Bucky tries not to smile. “I promise I can handle myself if things get rough.”

“Well, I guess they wouldn’t’ve made you Captain America unless you had something going for you,” Happy admits, grudgingly enough that Bucky would smile under different circumstances. “You got something against this guy?”

“Yes,” Bucky says, through clenched teeth. “It’s personal.”

“What is it, Avengers stuff?” Bucky just glares, and Happy says, “Okay, I get it, need-to-know only. Anyway, Killian’s got a right-hand man, this shady character he brought with him when he visited Pepper. I’ve had one of my people tailing him the last couple days. He’s got a pattern, sticks with Killian in the daytime and runs errands for him in the evening. I’m gonna follow him tonight, see what he’s up to. You want to come along?”

Bucky nods. “I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you think they were going to break up again? Oh, no, my friends, this is going to be much, much worse. XD
> 
> The text message is stolen from [this](http://lovelyladylunacy.tumblr.com/post/138757706749/imagine-your-otp-with-duwangarang), because I’m a sucker for an Imagine Your OTP prompt.


	9. Chapter 9

For someone who takes so much delight in calling him a nerd all the time, Bucky thinks, Tony sure did manage to build a house that looks like the fuckin’ Starship Enterprise has landed on a clifftop in Malibu. From the outside, it’s all glass and concrete and hypermodern bullshit. Inside, it’s a little better; it still feels way too upscale and trendy for his taste, not to mention that the floor-to-ceiling windows all the way around the house offer way too much exposure to make a sniper comfortable, but there are some soft, homey touches he attributes to Pepper—the thick rug and the throw pillows on the otherwise uninviting couch, the painting on the wall that looks less aggressively postmodern and more like somebody was trying to paint what it feels like to come home after a long time away.

It doesn’t feel like a home, though. Home, in Bucky’s opinion, is a place where a guy can leave a half-finished book and a couple of coffee cups on the table without feeling like somebody’s going to call security on him. And it’s a place you decorate for Christmas yourself instead of hiring somebody else to do it, which is obviously the case here, because the holiday décor is elegant and precise and completely soulless. Okay, so the Barnes-Rogers household has a cheesy fake tree because pine is on Steve’s long list of allergies, but they had a ball kitting it out with multicolored string lights and the flat clay ornaments Becca’s kids painted for them in art class, mostly because they were doing it together.

Bucky suddenly feels like he understands Tony Stark a lot better, if his normal has always been other people making the holidays happen while his parents were off doing rich people things. If he’s never had a raucous, messy, chaotic family holiday where fancy didn’t matter because everybody was together, then it’s kind of amazing he didn’t turn out worse. In fact, he suspects Tony’s guilty of the only personal touch on the Christmas decorations at all: a row of stockings on the mantel labeled **Tony, Pepper,** and **Jarvis**. For all his faults—and they’re a lot of faults—the guy does have a sense of humor.

Pepper comes down the stairs as he’s setting the shield and his beat-up duffel bag on the polished floor. She’s in jean shorts and bare feet (if he had to go around in heels and stockings all the time, he’d implement a reverse dress code at home, too), and she looks great, except for the fact that her eyes are shadowed and puffy from a mostly sleepless night. She holds out her arms for a hug, and he responds by lifting her off her feet and spinning her around, which at least makes her smile. “Pepper.”

“Bucky. It’s so good to see you.”

“Same. What’s going on with Tony?”

 Pepper shakes her head, glances at the stairs, and lowers her voice. “I thought he was doing better for a while, but it seems like the latest Mandarin attack has pushed him over the edge.”

“Wait—latest? Another one?” She nods, and Bucky says, “Shit. I guess I’ve been kind of preoccupied. Okay, so he’s gotten worse how, exactly?”

“Staying in his workshop for days at a time, not sleeping… Rhodey said he thinks Tony had a panic attack when they were out at lunch the other day. And then, yesterday, Tony told me that there’s an imminent threat to the world from all the things the Avengers face, gods and aliens and other dimensions, and that he’s terrified that he can’t protect it.”

“You know, on anyone else that would sound like raging paranoia mixed up with some kind of crazy savior complex, but if there’s any one guy who _can_ singlehandedly save the world, it’s probably the guy who builds clean energy generators in caves and discovers new elements in the basement. That’s still a shit-ton of pressure to put on himself, though,” Bucky says. “Was that when you called me?”

“No. I called you after…” Pepper looks like she can’t believe she’s about to say this. “Last night, he called the suit in his sleep. I woke up and it was standing over me…” She shakes her head. “I can’t talk about it.”

“Holy shit. How is it even possible for him to do that?”

“He put sensors under his skin. Here.” She points to her forearm. “He doesn’t want anyone else to be able to take control of the suits from him.”

“So his solution was doing surgery on himself? Fuck,” Bucky says, with feeling. “Pepper, I think you need somebody with a lot of letters after their name to sort this one out, not a jumped-up sniper with a Frisbee.”

“I think what he needs is a friend,” Pepper says. She looks even more exhausted now, and Bucky thinks, _No fucking wonder._ Both of them are overdue for some help, not just Tony. Why does everybody he cares about always try to go it alone when he keeps telling them they don’t fucking _have_ to?

“Who needs what?” Tony comes up the stairs just then, and Bucky gives a guilty start, although it’s obvious that he didn’t hear anything. “Oh, hey, it’s the bride to be. Have you said yes to the dress yet?”

“What’s this?” Pepper asks, perking up. “Bucky, are you _engaged?_ Why didn’t you say so?”

“Okay, first off,” Bucky says, “I’m not engaged, I’m proposing. Big difference, especially where Steve Rogers is involved. I give it a thirty percent chance he’ll tell me I’m supposed to be Captain America, not Captain New York, and he won’t get married until everybody can, and the next thing I know we’re organizing a march on the White House or something. Second, I’ve got my eye on this little Vera Wang with a sweetheart neckline. No, seriously, Tony, I don’t know what’s worse, your heteronormative bullshit or the fact that I asked you not to _tell_ anybody about this.”

“Please. As if you wouldn’t have told Pepper yourself in the next three minutes,” Tony says dismissively, and just for a second it’s like old times, like Tony is fine, couldn’t be better. Then Bucky looks at him, really looks, and the illusion shatters. Tony has aged, just in the short time since the team has seen him. There’s no new gray in his hair, no new lines in his face, but something in his eyes is different, like he hasn’t been able to shut off his brain for too long. Like the responsibility he’s decided to shoulder is wearing him out in a way R&R won’t fix. Bucky wonders if he looked like this to Becca when he first came home. “C’mon, let’s hit the workshop. Got some ideas for that arm that I want to bounce off you.”

“I already said no laser cannons, Tony. And also no LEDs, no radar, no trackers, no flamethrowers, and I do _not_ want it made detachable, ‘cause all I need is some bad guy managing to hit the eject button on one of my limbs while I’m fighting.” By the time he’s finished the sentence, he’s followed Tony down the stairs to his workshop, where a couple of little robots are busily clearing off the workbench. There’s a chair with the left armrest situated under a complicated piece of machinery. He sits down and turns his arm over, palm-up. A robotic arm comes down and latches around the plate on the inside of the elbow, and he makes an involuntary hissing sound.

“All right, there, buddy?” Tony asks, picking up the shield and turning it over.

“Yeah. It just always feels weird.” It’s not painful, exactly, but the tug on the access panel is distinctly unpleasant, like the pressure of a dentist’s drill on a numbed tooth. “You get used to the arm. You don’t get used to the maintenance.”

Tony nods, tapping the glowing circle under his own T-shirt. “I get that. Of course, I’m lucky when my maintenance doesn’t involve cardiac arrest.”

“Ever think about not trying to one-up everybody in the room, Tony? Amputee here, for fuck’s sake.” Bucky deliberately looks away from the robot, which has now managed to pop the panel off completely, leaving the technological guts of the arm exposed. “Hey, you don’t have to answer this, but do you ever think about getting your heart thing fixed? You’re probably the only one of us who has a realistic shot at un-fucking his body.”

“What brings this on? Somebody having trouble? Is it Clint with the hearing aids again? Because, on-call genius, sometimes I can fix these things if people ask,” Tony says, taking the panel across the room and situating it under some kind of machine Bucky can’t identify. “You know, I offered to help the government with this Mandarin situation, too. Not as an Avenger, just as a guy with a lot of tech at his disposal. You know what they did instead? Took the armor I designed for Rhodey, threw some paint on it, and started calling him Iron Patriot.”

“That’s a fucking stupid name.”

“Well,” Tony says dryly, “there’s nothing that strikes fear into a terrorist’s heart like a name that tested well with focus groups. What I’m saying is, don’t beat yourself up, Barnes. The government wants us out of it, and you and I both know that at a certain point, you can’t fight City Hall. And buying a controlling interest in the armed forces would be a little ambitious, even for me. …What? What’s funny?”

“Nothing.” Except that here he was trying to help Tony, and Tony is trying to help _him_. “Although I doubt Steve will ever agree with you.”

“Mighty Mouse is not what I’d call a strict realist in that regard, no.”

“Tony, has he ever approached you about whether there’s a way to get the super-soldier serum back?”

“No,” Tony says, surprised. “And that’s one case where I hope he never does ask.” He’s moved on to working on the shield now, but he sets it down and turns to face Bucky. “As much as I’d love to think I could one-up my old man, recreating Erskine’s serum is a pipe dream at best. And we’ve seen what happens when it goes wrong. I kid Bruce about the giant green rage monster, but it’s a hell of a cautionary tale.”

“Yeah. I figured. I’m just surprised Steve didn’t even ask you.”

“Probably didn’t want to set me off about my dad,” Tony says. When Bucky looks hard at him, he shrugs. “I do have the occasional moment of self-awareness, Barnes. And I’m pretty sure Dad decided I’d never live up to his war BFF while I was still in utero. If he’d come back all shiny and muscular, I probably would’ve had some real issues with the guy. Hard not to feel sorry for him now, though.”

“Yeah, it really does suck for him,” Bucky says, trying to take that in the spirit it’s intended, because Steve _hates_ being pitied. After that, he can’t think of a way to turn the conversation back around to Tony’s current state of mind without being obvious, so he waits quietly until, after several muttered obscenities and one very small contained explosion, Tony crosses the room and drops two shiny objects into his hand. For once, Tony actually stuck to his word and kept it simple: a matched set of plain bands with brushed silver exteriors, one a little larger than the other. They’re _perfect._ “You made two?”

“What, you think the proposee should be the only one who tells the world they’re taken? Who’s full of heteronormative bullshit now, Barnes? I sized yours for your right hand, figured we could always weld something to the left hand later, if you want to go that way.”

Bucky slips the larger ring onto his right ring finger. It fits perfectly. “Do I want to know how you got our ring sizes?”

“Measured the robot duplicates I keep in the sex dungeon.” When Bucky just looks at him, he sighs and says, “Jarvis has physical scans of everybody for uniform design. Does it make you happy to suck all the mystery out of life? Anyway, there you go, something new. The shield’s borrowed and blue already, and your something old is obviously your nonagenarian sugar daddy, so I think we’ve covered all the bases.”

“Thank you, Tony.” Bucky tucks the rings into his pocket until he can put them somewhere safe. “I really appreciate this.”

“Don’t mention it. You heading back tonight, or can you stay for dinner?”

“Neither, actually. I’m gonna stay for a few days, if that’s cool. Thought you might be up for some combat practice. But tonight, Happy’s taking me down to Hollywood to do the tourist thing.”

“Good luck,” Tony says. “You’re gonna hate it.”

 

Bucky hates it.

Okay, so maybe his general impression of Hollywood is a little bit colored by the fact that he and Happy are trying to blend in, which, thanks to the metal arm, makes it a foregone conclusion that he’s going to swelter in a long-sleeved T-shirt and keep his gloved metal hand shoved in a pocket. But yeah, when Happy said the guy they’re following tends to head to Hollywood Boulevard this time of night, he had a certain picture in his head of glamorous palm-tree-lined streets and movie stars in sunglasses walking yippy little dogs on leashes. Instead, it feels dirty and overcrowded and generally disappointing, and the Walk of Fame is a lot less impressive than he hoped it would be.

 **So Hollywood kind of sucks,** he texts Steve, who replies,

**I’ve been there. You don’t know the half of it.**

**That’s right!** , Bucky, who has, in fact, seen the truly terrible black and white movie that Steve was forced to film in the propaganda days, types back, **Sometimes I forget I’m sleeping with a real live movie star. Do you have a star on the walk of fame?**

**That was after my time, thank God.**

**We should petition to get you one. You know why?**

**Please don’t tell me.**

**Because you’re strong and brave, here to save the American waaaaaaaaaaaay** ♫

**I hate you.**

“Barnes,” Happy says, just at that moment, and Bucky hits _send_ on a kissy-face emoji and moves over to where Happy is standing, in front of a kiosk selling tacky tourist sunglasses. He’s using the mirror over the rack to watch a couple of guys behind him. It only takes Bucky a glance to lock onto the targets; a guy in a bad suit, setting a briefcase next to a scruffy guy in a shabby hoodie. “Wow,” he murmurs, when Bad Suit starts to walk away and Hoodie reaches for the briefcase. “Natasha Romanoff weeps for these amateurs. That’s the clumsiest live drop I’ve ever seen.”

“We get a look at what’s in this suitcase, we can crack this whole Killian thing wide open,” Happy says.

“Sure. You take Hoodie, I’ll take Suit,” Bucky says, and starts to move through the crowd. Happy strides off in the opposite direction, and Bucky hears the guy go _oof_ when Happy’s shoulder collides with the arm holding the briefcase. Bad Suit starts to turn, and Bucky quietly steps into his path. “Hey, excuse me, buddy, but I’m kind of lost,” he says, putting on his best dumb-tourist smile. “I guess this is the Chinese Theater and I’m supposed to be at the Egyptian Theater? Can you help me out?”

Bad Suit smiles at Bucky, and it takes everything Bucky has not to let his own smile slip. The guy has a grin like a shark. At the corner of his vision, Happy is helping Hoodie pick up whatever fell out of the suitcase; Bucky doesn’t see what it is that he palms and pockets, but Bad Suit must, because he smirks like he knows a whole lot of things Bucky doesn’t. “Yeah, sure, _buddy,”_ he says, “I can help you, as soon as your friend there gives back what he took.”

Bad Suit starts to move past him, and Bucky’s left hand shoots out and grabs his arm. “Hey,” he says, dropping the smile and letting the metal fingers press a little harder than necessary, “it’s not too late to do this the easy way.”

“Aw, but the easy way’s no fun,” says Bad Suit, and—what the ever-loving fuck is _that?_ There’s a flicker of something under his skin—Bucky’s first thought is _ghost stories,_ and a moment later he remembers being about eight years old at a sleepover, how whoever was holding the flashlight would put their fingers over the lens and make their skin glow red for maximum creepiness. This isn’t a party trick, though, because there’s no outside source for the glow that flares under Bad Suit’s cheekbone. Bucky has time to think _fuck, we got an enhanced in the field,_ and then he hears a flurry of motion behind him, and he turns in time to see Hoodie’s entire body start to blaze like molten lava.

Fuck, fuck, _fuck,_ he thinks, and almost reaches behind his back for the shield before he remembers that he left it on the bed in Tony’s guestroom. Without it, the metal arm isn’t nearly enough cover to protect him if this guy goes nuclear. He turns to run but he already knows he’s not going to be fast enough, and then Happy hits him from behind in a flying tackle that throws him forward, behind the cover of one of the crappy souvenir stands, and for a second everything is on fire, and then everything is dark.

 

Bucky is sitting with his head on his hands, breathing raggedly, when Tony comes in, and he knows right away that Tony’s state of mind is even worse than his own. Why isn’t Pepper here to calm Tony down? he wonders, even though he knows that isn’t fair; it’s not Pepper’s job to play nursemaid. But right now, Bucky’s in no shape to stop him if he wants to do something stupid.

“So you still don’t remember anything?” Tony asks, in a tone Bucky can’t read.

Bucky shakes his head. “Everything before the ambulance is like Swiss cheese. All I remember is flashes here and there. They said it might come back to me over the next couple days. Any word on Happy?”

“He’s stable. They won’t know anything else until he wakes up.” Tony is pacing near the door, making jerky little movements, edgy. “How did they know you’d be there?” he suddenly demands.

“What?”

“You and Happy. An Avenger and a known associate of one. That had to be why the Mandarin picked the target. Trying to make it personal. Imagine if he’d managed to kill Captain America instead of just giving you a concussion.”

“I don’t… I don’t think that’s right. I think we were there because…” Bucky shakes his head. This is ridiculous. The Mandarin can’t really _want_ a throwdown with the Avengers; there has to be some other reason they crossed paths. He’s sure he could remember if his brain would just quit spinning for a second. “I’ll tell you if I remember. Can we go? I’m real tired of hospitals.”

“You and me both, pal.” Tony hands him a baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses. “Secret Identity 101: protecting it,” he says, when Bucky looks at them blankly. “I have two cars outside. You go to the one with the driver. I’ll distract the paparazzi.”

Bucky doesn’t have the wherewithal to do anything but follow directions at this point, so he nods and follows Tony out through the corridors. His phone buzzes in his pocket—the screen is cracked from when he hit the ground, but usable—and he stops to check it. It’s a text from Steve, who didn’t even wait for him to explain the situation before he was haranguing Jarvis about arranging a flight. **Boarding now,** it says. **How are you holding up?**

 **Not great.** In a burst of painful honesty, Bucky adds, **They keep asking if I remember. What if I just don’t want to? What if I fucked up and it’s my fault Happy got hurt?**

**I’m sure you didn’t, but even if you did, it still wouldn’t be your fault. The Mandarin ordered the bombing, not you.**

Bucky takes a deep, shuddering breath. **I didn’t stop the Mandarin.**

**Don’t do that to yourself. If you go down that road, you’ll never stop. Get some rest. We’ll figure it out when I get there.**

Okay. He can keep it together until Steve is there, and then he can crash as hard as he wants. That sounds almost completely doable.

Except that, shit, now he’s lost Tony. He hurries down the hallway to catch up. Tony is heading out the door when he hits the lobby, and he walks fast, but about a hundred reporters (God, why does it always have to be _reporters)_ have surrounded Tony by the time he opens the door. It’s mostly a cacophony of sound, which he _doesn’t_ need after head trauma, until one voice suddenly rises above the crowd: “Hey, Mr. Stark, when is somebody gonna kill this guy? I’m just sayin’.”

Abruptly, Tony stops, and sets his shoulders in a way Bucky knows, because that’s the way _Steve’s_ shoulders move when he’s about to do something colossally noble and stupid, and he snatches the phone out of the stupid reporter’s hands.

To say that Bucky has a bad feeling about this would be a severe understatement.

“Here's a little holiday greeting I've been wanting to send to the Mandarin,” Tony says. “I just didn't know how to phrase it until now. My name is Tony Stark, and I'm not afraid of you. I know you're a coward—”

“Oh, sweet fucking _mercy,”_ Bucky says under his breath.

“—So I’ve decided that you just died, pal. I'm gonna come get the body. There's no politics here; it's just good old-fashioned revenge. There's no Pentagon; it's just you and me. And on the off-chance you're a man, here's my home address—”

Bucky thinks _Tony, NO!_ as loudly as he can, but apparently he still hasn’t developed mutant psychic powers that can keep his teammates from being complete fucking idiots, because Tony finishes, “—Ten-eight-eighty Malibu Point, 90265. I'll leave the door unlocked. That's what you wanted, right?” And Bucky can only watch in complete horror as Tony throws the reporter’s phone against the hospital wall and says, “Bill me,” before he gets into his car and peels out of the parking lot.

Bucky stares after him in abject horror for a good five seconds before the a voice from Tony’s second car says, “Sir?” and he remembers to turn, still half-expecting to see Happy in the driver’s seat. But, no, it’s some kid he doesn’t know, and Bucky sinks into the passenger seat and shuts the door. He’s got just enough energy left to say, “My head hurts bad enough already, don’t you dare squeal those fucking tires,” and the kid, who was obviously about to do just that, looks abashed as he puts the car in gear and eases the car out of the lot.

Bucky leans back against the soft leather seat and closes his eyes. Goddammit, he’s fighting down the budding panic attack for all he’s worth, but it’s been a rough couple days, and what happened at the Chinese Theater would’ve set off his PTSD even if it hadn’t hurt one of his friends. Not to mention that Tony just threatened a terrorist.

Tony just threatened a terrorist.

_Oh, fuck me with a chainsaw, this is not gonna end well for anyone._

Bucky can’t believe it. He came out here to help Tony, and all he’s done is make things worse. Why didn’t he… why did… He can’t remember _what_ kind of mistake he could have made that might have set off the current situation, but he’s blaming himself, hard. _Don’t go down that road,_ Steve says, but the truth is, he’s halfway down it already and stepping on the gas. He needs somebody to stop him, to hold him and stroke his hair until his panic subsides to manageable levels, to not judge him no matter how hard he freaks out, to promise him that everything will be okay even if he doesn’t believe it himself.

Steve’s on his way, though. All he has to do is hold himself together for four, maybe five more hours, and Steve will be there, and maybe it really will all be fine.

 

_“Good evening and welcome to Channel One News. A tragic situation on the West Coast unfolding this evening at the home of Tony Stark, the billionaire inventor popularly known as the superhero Iron Man. Stark and fellow Avenger Captain America are both presumed dead after what appears to have been an air strike leveled Stark’s Malibu home. The terrorist known as the Mandarin has claimed responsibility for the attack…”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, this looks bad. But never fear, I promise it’s all going to be okay in the end!


	10. Chapter 10

It’s not real. It can’t be real.

Steve is standing on a cliff in Malibu, staring at the wreckage of what used to be Tony’s mansion. The winding road that leads up the hill is blocked in both directions, the whole area crawling with National Guard airmen; they’ve declared a no-fly zone for miles around. The two notable exceptions to that are Tony’s friend Rhodey—Colonel Rhodes—and Sam Wilson, who are both on search-and-rescue detail, flying between the ragged gaps in the structure and shining lights inside, looking for survivors. Any minute now, they’ll find one, at _least_ one. A high-powered flashlight beam will glint off silver and red metal, and they’ll pull Bucky from the wreckage, bruised and griping about how _it took you assholes long enough, I was bored to tears in there, Jesus._ They’ll put a blanket around his shoulders and he’ll snarl that he’s not in shock, _tell them, Sam, tell them I’m fucking fine,_ and then he’ll see Steve and tear himself away from the rescuers, run over and pull him into a bear hug and say _God, Stevie, I missed your stupid face,_ and he’ll say, _It’s okay, Buck, it’s over, we can go home._

He’s been waiting here for six hours and it’s starting to get dark, but they’re bringing in searchlights, which means the rescuers aren’t giving up, and neither will he.

Gravel crunches on the path behind him, and then Natasha comes up beside him and kneels next to him. “Clint and I are going back to the hotel,” she says. “There’s nothing either of us can do here. You should come with us.”

“No, thanks,” he says. “I want to be here when they find him.”

“You’re not helping Bucky if you push yourself until you collapse.”

Jesus, they treat him like he’s either ninety or twelve. “I’m staying,” he says.

Natasha sighs. “The truth is, the Army is asking everyone to clear the area. What’s left of the house is structurally unstable. They’re going to do a controlled detonation to collapse the most dangerous parts of the structure.”

“They can’t!” Steve says, horrified. “Bucky and Tony are still in there! What if they’re unconscious? What if they _hurt_ them?”

“Steve, they finished scanning the house hours ago. There are no heat signatures inside.” Natasha pauses, which is bad, because Natasha doesn’t hesitate. “They haven’t been looking for survivors for a while now.”

The words are like a punch to the gut. “What if they got inside a couple of Tony’s suits?” he demands. “They couldn’t register body heat through—”

“If they were in the suits, they’d have emergency communications channels. S.H.I.E.L.D. is monitoring every frequency. There’s nothing.”

“They could have lost power. If the comms got knocked out—”

“Steve,” Natasha says, and he looks at her and realizes: she’s putting on a front, too. She’s as upset as he is; she’s just far and away better at concealing it. “They’re not in the house.”

“Then Tony got them out of the house, and they’re stranded somewhere. The suits fly, for God’s sake.” Natasha is looking at him with pity in her eyes. “Natasha, they’re not,” he says. And then, “I’m staying. They could still blast out a wall and find a, a panic room or something—”

“Steve, I’m so sorry about this,” Natasha says, “but if you don’t leave under your own power, S.H.I.E.L.D. will declare you a psychiatric risk, sedate you, and take you off the property.”

Steve’s jaw drops. _“What?_ That can’t be legal! Where’s Bruce? He’s a doctor, he’ll tell them I’m—”

“We thought it was better if Bruce sat this one out,” Clint says, coming up behind them. “When he heard the news he was, uh, a little emotional about it. Look, Tasha’s right. The second anyone knows anything, you’ll know it too. But meanwhile, Bucky wouldn’t want you to torture yourself.”

 _No,_ Steve thinks, suddenly deeply bitter toward both of them, _Bucky wouldn’t_ want _me to. But he’d understand why I have to do it._ “Fine,” he says.

“You’ll come with us?”

“No. I mean fine, tell S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m calling their bluff. I’m not going anywhere,” Steve says, and means it.

In the end, he’s half right; nobody actually has the guts to sedate him, but it only takes two armed field agents to drag him away.

 

**_Dow plummets on Stark Industries uncertainty_ **

NEW YORK (AP)— _Stocks suffered their biggest drop in months today with the Dow diving almost 300 points after Stark Industries’ CEO, Tony Stark, was declared missing, presumed dead, in a terrorist attack on his Malibu mansion that also claimed the life of fellow Avenger Captain America. American markets opened at a loss, with further declines throughout the morning…_

 

Steve wakes up from a dream about the train. It’s not the first time; it was a regular occurrence before he started sleeping next to Bucky. Only this time it’s different: this time it’s Bucky’s fingers that slip through his grasp, Bucky’s face frozen in terror as it gets smaller and smaller, as he tries not to look away but finally can’t watch any longer. When he wakes up, he’s tangled in sheets that are clammy with sweat, but there’s a heartbeat of relief when he realizes it was just a dream, and he reaches out to touch Bucky, warm and real next to him.

When his hand only finds empty air, he remembers, and he buries his face in the hotel pillow and sobs.

 

**_‘American inspiration’: Brooklyn mourns loss of second Captain America_ **

BROOKLYN (AP)— _His face was always hidden by a mask or eyewear during public appearances; his military service records were heavily redacted; even his name was a mystery, deliberately concealed from the public by S.H.I.E.L.D. In one sense, the nation is mourning a superhero it never knew._

_In Brooklyn, though, everyone feels like they know Captain America._

_“He showed that a disability doesn’t have to be the only thing people see about you,” says Katrina Ramaker, 13, of Midwood. Like many others, she’s paying her respects at the monument to Steve Rogers, the original Captain America, whose WWII example inspired the current Cap to revive the title. A wheelchair user since a childhood accident, Katrina feels a special tie to the reclusive Avenger. Many seem to share that connection; at impromptu memorial sites springing up around the city, mourners have taken to leaving teddy bears with one arm wrapped in duct tape and adorned with a red star in tribute to the fallen hero’s iconic (continued on page 4)_

 

In retrospect, he should have expected somebody to start talking about a memorial service, and given how hard he’s worked to keep his feelings under wraps so nobody has an excuse to dismiss him as irrational or unstable, he’s almost grateful to Maria Hill for providing such a perfect excuse to lash out. But after ten minutes of blistering commentary on how S.H.I.E.L.D. has had over twenty-four hours and hasn’t uncovered a trace of Bucky or Tony, alive or dead, and how can they be talking about memorializing people they can’t even fucking _find_ , he realizes Hill is only letting him yell in her face because he’s grieving, and his anger fizzles.

Too many people in the twenty-first century already treat him like a hothouse flower, a semi-invalid from a simpler time who needs to be cossetted and sheltered. Funny how people seem to forget that even before he was in the Army, he’d already survived a laundry list of things that should have killed him because he was too damn stubborn to die. Bucky, on the other hand, works damn hard to treat him as an equal. Sure, he slows his pace so Steve can keep up without wheezing and walks on Steve’s left side to be next to his good ear, but it’s because he wants to accord Steve the courtesy, not because he thinks Steve is weak. It’s the same thing that was so precious about Peggy. Both of them always saw the man inside the body first; both of them appreciated his strengths and called him on his bullshit with equal enthusiasm. The contrast with Hill and her excessively concerned face makes him almost physically nauseous, and he ends up breaking off in the middle of a sentence and walking away.

It’s not until later that he realizes Hill might have a point. God forbid they find a body, it’s an easy call: there’s no way Bucky would want his final resting place to be anywhere but Brooklyn. Bucky’s soul is harder to place. He’s got Lutherans and Methodists on one side of his family, Russian Jews on the other; where Steve’s dog tags were stamped C in the Religious Affiliation slot, Bucky’s said NO PREF, because, he joked, there was no checkbox for “it’s complicated.” But Steve doesn’t think Bucky would object to a sincere prayer or two on his behalf, either, and later in the day, when he slips out of the hotel and takes himself for a walk along the cliffs, he catches himself murmuring, “O God, whose property is always to have mercy and to spare, we humbly beseech Thee on behalf of Thy servant Bucky Barnes, which Thou hast called out of the world, that Thou wouldst not deliver him into the hands of the enemy, nor forget him…”

It’s not until then that he realizes he’s actually started to believe that Bucky is dead. When he does, the feeling that sweeps through him isn’t grief, though, and it certainly isn’t hope or comfort.

It’s rage.

 

**_Avengers Press Release, December 10, 2013_ **

_In accordance with the late hero’s wishes and for the further protection of his loved ones, the Avengers will not be revealing Captain America’s civilian identity at present. The family of the deceased has issued the following statement: “The man the world knew as Captain America was a hero to our family long before he was a hero to the nation. While we often feared for his safety, it was impossible not to admire his courage, dedication, and commitment. W_ _e are stunned and devastated by his loss, and we call on S.H.I.E.L.D. to find those accountable and bring them to justice…”_

 

Steve can’t say, afterward, when he makes the decision. Maybe it’s when Fury gathers the surviving Avengers for a videoconference and tells them that WSC has no plans to intervene in the Presidential response to the Mandarin, however poorly that’s going; maybe it’s when he spots Sam and Rhodey passing a bottle back and forth in the hotel bar, drinking with the grim resignation of men who’ve already mourned the loss of too many brothers this way; maybe it’s when Pepper breaks down crying in the unforgiving lens of a TV camera, and the bastard doesn’t even stop filming while Natasha grabs her shoulder and hustles her away. Or maybe he decided to do it when he realized that the last text Bucky will ever send him was, **I didn’t stop the Mandarin.**  Maybe trying to fulfill the closest thing Bucky voiced to a last wish will make up for the fact that he’s doing exactly what Bucky didn’t want him to do.

But Bucky was always fond of telling him, in twenty-first-century parlance, to _own his shit,_ so, fine: maybe the truth is that it was none of those things.

Maybe he’s finally reached his limit, where he just can’t take another loss.

 

**_Secretary of State calls for ‘swift, decisive action’ from WSC_ **

WASHINGTON (AP)— _In a stirring speech Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of State Alexander Pierce paid tribute to two fallen Avengers while calling for a decisive response by the World Security Council._

_“The heroes we knew as Iron Man and Captain America fought for peace, not only for our nation but for the world,” Pierce stated during a press conference on the White House lawn. “The World Security Council bears a moral imperative to respond, not only by bringing the Mandarin to justice by any means necessary, but by dedicating all available resources to the ongoing fight against terror at the international level…”_

 

Jarvis deleted Killian’s information from his phone, but there are still these handy things called phone books, even if they’re harder to find these days. It takes him a while, but he gets through to Killian’s administrative assistant, and when he drops his name, her bored tone switches to almost manic helpfulness: Is there any chance he’d be willing to meet with Dr. Killian in person? She can book a plane for him, she can make all the arrangements, Dr. Killian will just be so excited to have him onsite. He says yes, because what else does he have to do? Clint was right; he wasn’t helping anybody by sitting around waiting for S.H.I.E.L.D. to fish Bucky’s body out of the ocean. He’d rather get back to work.

The anger is like a ball of ice in his chest, driving out all other emotions, freezing his blood as if they’d never pulled him out of that damned plane. If this is what Bruce feels like all the time, Steve is actually starting to see how it might be a comfort. 

He waits until he’s on the plane to text Natasha:  **Had to get away for a while. Don’t worry, I’m fine, just need some alone time.** Then he turns off his phone, which is definitely what Bucky would call a dick move. Let S.H.I.E.L.D. chase him down if they want to, though. It doesn’t matter. They’re already too late.

 

 Advanced Idea Mechanics is headquartered in a bland-looking building at the back of an unremarkable office park outside Miami. It’s muggier here than California, and his inhaler is at the bottom of his suitcase, which is causing the too-helpful admin to fuss about his labored breathing as she hurries him toward Killian’s office. Killian is working on a shiny white computer with a massive screen, and he stands up and comes around the desk to greet him. “Captain,” he says, breaking into a broad smile. “You have no idea what a thrill this is for me.”

“Steve,” Steve corrects. “Just Steve. I don’t hold any rank anymore.”

“Steve it is. When I got your message, I almost gave up on ever having the chance to meet you. Well, let that be a lesson to me,” Killian says. “The whole purpose of the Extremis project is to help people who never give up. Can I get you anything? Water? Coffee?”

Steve shakes his head. Honestly, he almost broke down when he walked past a fancy espresso machine on the way in here; it was a sudden, painful reminder of the one hidden in his studio at home, the one he ordered for Bucky weeks ago as a Christmas gift. “Let me just…” He sits on one of the padded chairs across from Killian’s desk and fishes his inhaler out of his suitcase. “Sorry.”

“No, no, don’t apologize. The humidity is terrible here, isn’t it? But the city has everything we need.” He waits while Steve breathes in a puff of medicated air and holds it in as long as his lungs will let him; then he goes on, “It really is an honor to met you, Steve. When I heard from my friends at S.H.I.E.L.D. that you were alive—well, frankly, it was a childhood dream come true. I was incredibly inspired by your example when I was younger. Honestly, you’re a big part of the reason I went into the sciences.”

“Really,” Steve says. He got a lot of flattery during the war, but that one’s especially rich.

“It’s true, my right hand to God. You were a man who never gave up on overcoming his physical limitations. I myself was hoping to find, if not the next iteration of the Erskine serum, at least—well. Let me just show you what I was up against.”

Killian goes back around the desk and taps a few keys, then spins the monitor to show Steve a scrolling list of text, next to a photo—a younger Killian, obviously, long-haired and unkempt, leaning heavily on a metal crutch. Steve skims the words and grimaces. Killian’s list of health problems is—was—actually longer than his own. Genetic disorders, physical conditions he's never heard of before, multiple uses of words like _disease_ and _syndrome_. And yet, here Killian is, standing tall and straight, the picture of good health. “And Extremis did this for you,” Steve says, looking him up and down. “How does it work?”

“Ah,” Killian says, taking a handful of metal balls out of his pocket. He tosses them on the floor, clicks a button on a remote, and a hologram lights up around them. “Consider the brain,” he says, gesturing to the image. “Oh—no, wait, that’s the universe. But it’s strangely memetic, don’t you think? Now this,” he clicks the remote again, “is the human brain. My brain, in fact—”

“Dr. Killian,” Steve says.

“Please, Steve. Aldrich.”

“I’m not interested in hearing your sales pitch. I just want to know what the risks are.”

Killian looks at him for a long moment. Then he says, “Well, then, Steve, the truth is, every version of the formula becomes more stable, but with the earlier versions, we did lose a few volunteers. Some were already terminally ill; in other cases, their bodies simply rejected the formula. But for those who were able to tolerate the treatment, the results have been…” He pauses, searching for the right word, and comes up with, “Spectacular.”

“And you think there’s a chance that this formula of yours will kick-start something that’s dormant in my blood,” Steve says, repeating what Killian told him weeks ago, the first time they spoke on the phone.

“Only a chance. But, yes. Assuming your body accepts the formula, you’ll certainly be stronger. You _could_ be completely restored to your former self.”

Steve takes a deep breath—well, the deepest breath he can at the moment—and steadies himself against the desk. Bucky was right; Killian is a consummate salesman, too slick, too polished to be trustworthy. Steve neither likes nor trusts him. But for once in his life, he’s not interested in the morality of the thing. He’s here for the outcome. “You must have people lined up out the door to try this process,” he says. “Why reach out to me?”

“Is that a joke? Steve, you’re medically unique. In the history of humankind, there’s been one super-soldier—”

“Two,” says Steve, quietly.

“…You mean the Red Skull? I’d hardly consider him a success. But if Extremis were to trigger any traces of the Erskine formula still in your blood, well—science has advanced by leaps and bounds since the last time a sample of your blood was studied. We didn’t even have DNA typing when the last sample was expended. To have the first crack at studying that formula with modern methods? Forgive my hubris, but that’s a Nobel prize in the making.”

“And helping a lot of people,” Steve says, his tone as dry as Bucky’s ever was.

“Any results we got would have a ripple effect in the medical community, certainly. But I’d be dishonest if I told you I’m not interested in a legacy as well.” Killian smiles. “Now, what else do you need to know?”

“Nothing,” Steve says, holding out his hand for Killian to shake. He meets his eyes and says, “I’m in.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, man, Stevie, you're _killing_ me here. Faithful readers, this is me sending you a huge Bucky Bear hug for sticking with me. Some fun twists to come in the next chapter, I promise (two of which I hinted at herein), with a lot less STEVIE NO! and a lot more BUCKY YES! in the near future.
> 
> By the way, do I have any science folks in the audience? If so, anyone have a fun suggestion for the title of Shrinkyclinks Hijinks part 3, something in the vein of the first two? I feel like there's a word about explosions that would be perfect, and I can't remember it...


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WHERE THE HELL IS BUCKY?

_As many times as he heard his dad grumble about it when he was a kid, it wasn’t until he’d been in the Army for a while that Bucky really understood the meaning of “hurry up and wait.” This mission is one of those, and they’ve been hanging around long enough in the desert sun that Forrest is starting to get squirrelly. “Kid keeps pacing like that, he’s gonna give himself heatstroke,” he mutters, from where he sits in the shade of the Humvee. The one consolation today is that they’re out here with a bunch of brass in their dress uniforms, so for once the ranking officers are suffering more than the grunts._

_“Well, we’re not all experts at sitting on our asses like you, Sarge.” Weisinger is, in fact, doing precisely that; he could even argue that she’s doing it better, since she’s sitting in the driver’s seat with her legs hanging out the door. It’s her second deployment, and like Bucky, she knows the importance of resting up whenever she can. Forrest, on the other hand, hasn’t even been overseas for a month yet. He’ll figure it out eventually, but right now, it’s getting annoying._

_“Hey, you fuckin’ bundle of youthful energy,” he calls. “C’mere, I’ll show you a constructive way to pass the time.”_

_Ramirez, who’s lounging on top of the Humvee because even in the midday sun, nothing comes between him and his precious mounted .50 Cal if he can help it, sits up abruptly. “Daaamn, kid, you haven’t seen Sarge’s party tricks yet? He’s been holding out on you,” he says, shifting around for a better view._

_Bucky grins and pulls his black-bladed KA-BAR out of its sheath on his belt. He starts off simple, flicking the knife handle back and forth a few times, making sure he’s got the feel of it. Then he spins the blade over his thumb, one rotation first, then two, then three, picking up speed before he starts with the flips. Down, up, down, up, forward grip, palm spin, and then, when he knows he has the kid a little hypnotized, he flips it end over end and snatches it out of the air before he dances it across his fingers again._

_“Jesus Christ,” Forrest says, deeply impressed._

_“Watch your fuckin’ language, kid.” Bucky slides the knife back into its sheath and pulls out a smaller folding knife, tossing it at Forrest, who fumbles the catch out of surprise and has to pick it up out of the dirt. “Start now, it’ll only take you about six years of being bored off your ass to get as good as me.”_

_Forrest nods and flips the knife open to start practicing. He is, as Bucky expected, terrible at it, but at least he’s quit that fucking pacing._

_“You know he’s gonna lose a finger,” Ramirez says balefully, and Bucky shrugs. He never has._

_Right about then, somebody yells, “Barnes,” and Bucky gets on his feet and snaps to attention just in time for two of the top brass to come walking up. One of them is General Booth, who’s in charge of this particular circus; the other he doesn’t place until Booth says, “Sergeant Barnes, this is Colonel James Rhodes, U.S. Air Force.”_

_“Sir,” he says, saluting._

_“At ease,” says Rhodes. “How long have you served, Barnes?”_

_“Six years, sir.”_

_“And this is your squad?”_

_Bucky nods. They’ve all followed his lead, standing at attention, even Ramirez, who’s slithered down from the top of the Humvee._

_“Well, I hope you’re ready for the toughest assignment of your career, soldier.”_

_Bucky doesn’t let his expression change, but his heart starts racing. Nobody’s actually said it, but this tour, far away from any active combat area, was basically a reward, an easy assignment after the hell of the last one. And now he’s got Air Force brass giving him an order, way out here, miles from anything. Are they tapping him for more wetwork? Part of him dreads the idea of another job like that, but a different part of him is bored to tears out here, running escort missions and wrangling FNGs. It’s only a little part of him, and he keeps it under a pretty tight lockdown, but it’s hungry to get back to doing what he’s best at. “I was born ready, sir,” he says, and waits to hear his fate._

_Which is when a slim, dark-haired guy in what even Bucky recognizes as a ridiculously_ _expensive business suit shoves past Rhodes, grabs the Humvee’s door handle, says, “I’m sorry, this is the Funvee. The Hum-drum-vee is over there,” and slides into the back seat, slamming the door behind him._

 _“Oh my God,” Forrest says, very quietly. “That’s… is that Tony Stark? Sarge, did—did Tony Stark just get in our—are we_ driving _Tony Stark?”_

_Rhodes looks at Barnes, then claps him on the shoulder and shakes his head. “Good luck, Barnes,” he says, with feeling. “You’re gonna need it.”_

 

Tony’s driver insists on walking Bucky to the door to be sure he makes it inside the mansion, and okay, fine, maybe he’s still a little out of it, because once he reaches the bedroom where he left his stuff, he sits down on the bed, just for a minute, and doesn’t even realize he’s closed his eyes until wakes to shouting downstairs. For a second he wonders if Steve has arrived and is giving Tony hell, which would be entertaining, but, no, a lot of the yelling is in women’s voices. Bucky sighs. Okay, he’s clearly still not firing on all cylinders, but he definitely never should have let himself fall asleep, injured or no, because Tony basically challenged a terrorist to a personal duel to the death, and they have to get the fuck out of here.

He hasn’t even had time to unpack his bag, so he shoulders it, slings the shield over his right arm, and heads downstairs, where he walks into the middle of a three-way argument between Tony, who’s wearing his latest armor, and Pepper, who’s holding a suitcase, and some woman he’s never seen before in his life. “The fuck,” he says, and they all turn to look at him. “Are you kidding me, Tones? You threaten a warlord and now you’re, what, having the neighbors over for brunch?”

“No, this is Maya Hansen,” Tony says, as if Bucky gives a fuck who she is beyond Potential Civilian Casualty #1. “She’s a botanist I used to know. Barely.” Which does absolutely nothing to convince Bucky, because Pepper is glaring at him, and if looks could kill, Tony would be a smear on the floor, suit or no suit.

“Let’s get your stuff,” she says to Bucky. “We’re going out of town—”

“Okay, we’ve been through this: _nope,”_ Tony interrupts.

“—Immediately and indefinitely,” Pepper says, adamant.

“I can’t protect you out there!” Tony shouts at her, and Bucky recognizes the futility of trying to intervene and approaches Maya Whoever instead. “It’s not safe for you to be here,” he begins, but her eyes are locked on the shield.

“Are you really Captain America?” she says—not impressed, just a little surprised, he guesses.

“Uh, yeah. Should I ask why Tony needed a botanist?”

“Tony didn’t call me. I came here because I need his help. And he needs to leave town.”

“That’s a fucking fantastic idea,” Bucky is saying, when something on the immense television screen behind her catches his eye. It’s an external video feed of the house—as soon as he works that out, he realizes he can hear a sound that must be a news chopper, because he just can’t get away from the _fucking_ press—and there’s another chopper on approach to the house, but it’s coming from the ocean side, and it clearly isn’t from any news outlet. “Fuck,” he says, and then he shouts, “Get down!” and throws himself on top of Maya, raising the shield to protect both of them, just before the missile hits.

As the blast shakes the house to its foundations, Bucky finally gets his chance to see what Pepper meant about him being able to call the suit, because Tony has issued some kind of command to the armor, and pieces of it are flying off him to latch on to Pepper, encasing her in red and gold metal. He hopes Tony can summon another suit for himself, because that means he just has to get himself and Maya out alive. “Run,” he shouts at her, and gives her a push toward the front door, keeping the shield up. Pepper has flipped around and is using the suit to shelter Tony from the worst of the falling debris, but most of the ocean-facing wall has caved in, and the black helicopter is hovering and _shit shit shit_ it’s ready to fire again and he does the only thing he has time to do, which is brace his feet and hold up the shield, but it doesn’t absorb enough of the blast; he feels himself thrown sideways and there’s nothing under his feet and his brain doesn’t even have time to catch up to his body before his stomach lurches and then he realizes he’s _falling…_

 

_“James Buchanan Barnes... Sergeant...”_

_“Bucky?”_

_“Three-two… five-five-seven… zero-three—”_

_“Bucky._ Bucky,” _somebody says, louder, and Bucky opens his eyes._

_Everything has been a blur for the last… oh, seventy-two hours, maybe? His sense of time has been pretty fucked since the fever set in. He remembers being hauled out of the cave and shoved into a Jeep; he remembers telling Jackson and Kowalski not to be scared, which was stupid, because he was terrified. Then they dragged him out of the Jeep and pushed him toward somebody in a Special Forces uniform; there were lights, people standing over him, the sound of an airplane engine, and then… “Mom?” he says. “Becca? What are you doing here? Where am I?”_

_His mother lets out a sigh of relief and squeezes his right hand. “You’re in Germany, sweetheart. You’re at Landstuhl Regional,” she says, tripping over the unfamiliar word; his knack with languages definitely comes from the Barnes side of the family. “They’re the best here, and they’re taking good care of you. You’re going to be fine.”_

_He smiles at her, but he knows she’s lying. They don’t fly your next of kin to LRMC because you stubbed your toe. He turns toward Becca and says, “How bad is it really, Bec?”_

_Becca doesn’t deserve this, but she’s in medical school, and she’ll have to learn how to be the bearer of bad news eventually. “Well, you’re not going to die,” she says, pulling her chair a little closer to the bed. “Can’t get rid of your dumb ass that easily.”_

“Rebecca!” _their mother says, but Bucky manages his first genuine chuckle in weeks._

_“It’s fine, Mom. If Bec was being nice, I’d know I was really in trouble.”_

_Becca’s mouth twitches too, but then she goes serious on him again. “How did you break your arm, Bucky? The doctors wouldn’t tell us anything except that it happened.”_

_Oh, fuck, he wishes she’d asked him anything but that._

If you’re captured, make every effort to escape; _that’s what the Army drills into your head. To escape, you need to overpower a guard, which means you need a weapon. One of the times they brought out the prisoners to haul shit around the encampment, Kowalski managed to swipe a scrap of steel that he thought he could file into a shiv. When the guards found it, Bucky said it was his, because he was the ranking officer among the captives and Kowalski was like Forrest, just a kid. They beat him then, picked up a metal oxygen canister and hit him with it until they heard his arm break. Yinsen, the Afghan prisoner they used as a medic, came later and tried to set the bone, but he could only do so much for an upper-arm compound fracture without equipment, and then Yinsen stopped coming…_

_“I fell pretty bad one time, while I was in the cave,” he says. “Stupid accident. You know how my luck is.”_

_Now he’s the liar and Becca’s the one who knows it, but apparently she’s going to let him do this for their mother, because she doesn’t push it. “You had a condition called osteomyelitis,” she says. “It means an infection developed in the bone that was broken. It was pretty advanced by the time they got you out. The doctors made the right call, Bucky, you need to know that. They saved your life, and you’re going to recover.”_

_“Okay.” So if he’s good now, why is she harping on his arm so much? Does he have a really gross scar or something? He turns his head to see._

_At first, he can’t even process what he’s looking at. The bandages don’t surprise him, but they just stop, right at the edge of his shoulder. He pulls his right hand free of his mother’s grip and brings it across his body to touch where his brain says his left arm should be, and his fingers move through the space, and what does… how does…_

_They cut his arm off._

_They cut his fucking arm off._

_“But how am I supposed to do my_ job _now?” he says, bewildered, and it might be the first time he’s ever seen Becca speechless._

 

Bucky breaks the surface of the water, gasping for air, but there’s more debris raining down from the sky—basically, half of Stark’s house is rubble now, rubble that could easily fall on him—and he immediately dives again. He doesn’t love immersing the metal arm, never trusts it to be quite as waterproof as advertised, but he did a little swim team stuff in high school and he hasn’t lost the knack. Sure, the ocean’s different from a nice clear pool and he never had to outswim chunks of a falling _house_ before, but he puts some distance between himself and the mess before he starts looking for a place to get back on dry land. Tony’s house is—was—on top of a cliff that went straight down into the ocean, but there’s a strip of beach a little ways south where he pulls himself up and staggers out of the surf.

Panting, dripping, he gets up on his feet and takes stock. He’s barefoot—kicked off his boots before he fell asleep, thank God, or that weight might have pulled him under—and he’s still wearing the Henley and cargo pants he had on at the theater, now completely soaked and dripping. He’s got no weapons, but after he cranks the metal arm a few times, he’s confident that it’s still in working order. His phone is still in a buttoned pants pocket, but when he takes it out, water pours out of its guts through the broken screen; his wallet is presumably gone forever; and somewhere along the way, after he hit the water, he also lost his grip on the vibranium shield.

He lost _Steve’s shield._ He lost the one symbol that was giving him any legitimacy as Captain America. Shit, Fury is gonna _kill_ him. Of course, if Fury doesn’t kill him, it means he’s going to have to replace his license, which means going to the New York DMV, so maybe death isn’t a bad alternative.

 _The rings._ He checks the little side compartment of the cargo pants that he zipped them into for safekeeping, has a bad moment when he can’t find them, and breathes a sigh of relief when he feels the cool, hard shape of them at the very bottom of the pocket. Maybe it’s silly to think it means anything that he managed to hold onto those even if he lost everything else, but just having them is somehow calming.

Okay, now, what about people? The other woman, Maya, he thinks she got out okay; she was running for the door last time he saw her. But does that mean she’s safe? And did Pepper get out at all? He didn't see. For that matter, did Tony get out, or did that selfish bastard go and get himself killed, without regard to what that would do to everybody who cares about him, because he was too goddamn stubborn to listen to Pepper and get out while the getting was good? Bucky doesn’t know, and he’s not _going_ to know until he makes what’s going to be a long, slow, painful slog off this beach, finds civilization, and talks somebody into letting a wet, bedraggled, metal-armed guy into letting him use their phone to call in to S.H.I.E.L.D. Until then, he has no idea if two of his best friends in the world are alive or dead.

Bucky feels a sudden, overwhelming surge of frustration—maybe because that’s the only thing that will keep him from being crushed by terror and grief. He turns in the direction of what’s left of the house, throws his arms wide, and shouts at the wreckage of Tony’s life: “What the screaming hell is _wrong_ with you, you armor-plated son of a bitch?”

In retrospect, it’s a stupid mistake to stand there yelling instead of looking for cover, not at all worthy of someone who’s supposed to wear the mantle of Captain America. In practical terms, though, the beach is wide open and the shooter is very, very good, so there’s probably nothing he could have done to avoid the bullet that punches through his chest.

 

 _They’re making a big deal about Bucky at Walter Reed, and he wishes they wouldn’t. Yeah, he knows it’s important to honor people who’ve served and sacrificed, and his Purple Heart is very pretty and a nice addition to his collection, but he wishes they’d just_ stop. _He didn’t choose to be in the Humvee with Tony Stark (who’s apparently decided to reinvent himself as a fucking_ superhero  _after his own captivity; Bucky doesn't even want to know_ _), and he definitely doesn’t feel like a hero. He feels like a guy who went through some really traumatic shit and had just enough dumb luck not to die of it._ _And now he has to figure out what to do with the rest of his life._

_Before this, things were looking pretty good for Bucky Barnes. He was great at his job, and felt like he had a purpose; he looked out for his team and trusted them; he didn’t have any trouble getting attention—male or female—when he wanted it; and he could help out his mom and sisters, send a little money every so often to make sure they were taken care of. Now he can’t do some of the things he used to do at all, and it takes him three times as long to do everything else one-handed (buttons, in particular, can go fuck themselves); now he’s going to be a burden on his family, instead of a support; he has no idea how dating is gonna work from here on out, but the one thing he’s sure about is that he’s damned if he’ll be anybody’s pity fuck; and as for his squad… well. He can’t blame himself for the convoy being attacked, there was obviously some kind of epic security fuckup way above his pay grade that led to that, and he knows he followed his training and gave his team their best chance at survival. But he wouldn’t be human if he didn’t feel some guilt over the fact that in the end, his best effort doesn't make Ramirez and Weisinger and poor stupid Forrest any less dead._

_The point is, when they clear everybody out of the room and a couple guys came in to do a security sweep and then the fucking Secretary of State walks in, he doesn’t exactly feel the surprise and gratification that’s probably expected of him at this juncture._

_If Alexander Pierce is annoyed by his lack of enthusiasm, he doesn’t show it. He’s obviously read some carefully curated file on Bucky, which allows him to make small talk for a few minutes: so you’re from Brooklyn, I understand your father was also career military, they tell me you were awarded a Bronze Star on a previous deployment, blah blah blah. Bucky is literally looking past him for the photographer, because he’s convinced that now Pierce is just stalling for his Visiting A Wounded Warrior photo op, when Pierce says, out of nowhere, “I understand you’re not a good candidate for a standard prosthetic.”_

_Bucky blinks. “No, sir. They say there’s too much damage.” It’s not just the scar tissue, either. The infection spread outward from the compound fracture at the top of his humerus, which meant they had to take everything up to the scapula to save his life. Becca thought she was helping when she showed him videos of advanced prosthetics, robot hands full of gears and motors and little computer chips that work like a real hand—but it turns out they need something to attach that device to_ _, and he’s got nothing left but an empty shoulder socket._

_“How do you feel about that, Sergeant?”_

_Bucky frowns at him. He’s already had like nine hundred psych consults; is he supposed to say something different now? He decides to take a chance on honesty, and says, “I think it sucks, sir.”_

_“So if you had a chance,” Pierce says, looking at him keenly, “would you go back in the field?”_

_Bucky doesn’t hesitate for a second. “Yes,” he says. “God, yes. The Army is my whole life. If somebody could wave a magic wand and get me a new arm, I’d do anything to be back out there, doing my job. But with all due respect, sir, I know I’m not fit for duty. My discharge papers are already in the works, so, uh, it’s pretty much a done deal.”_

_Pierce stands up, paces over to the window, and stares out the window at the lawn of Walter Reed for a long moment. Then he says, “You ever read Thomas Paine, son?”_

_Bucky, who hasn’t voluntarily read anything that isn’t sci-fi since he left high school, says, “That name’s not ringing a bell, sir.”_

_“ ‘These are the times that try men’s souls,’ ” Pierce quotes. “ ‘The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands by it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.’ Paine wrote that in 1776 about the American Revolution. Soldiers who understood real commitment were needed then, and they’re needed now. Sergeant, if you were given a second chance to put your body and your life on the line to serve your country, would you willingly go back out into the field?”_

_His country? Bucky feels his mouth twist in a half-smile. If Pierce is talking about politicians and agendas and compromises, then no, he’s not all that interested in risking his life and remaining limbs for that bullshit. But if he thinks about his family, and his civvie friends back home in Brooklyn, and the other American soldiers who are still overseas—the people he's supposed to be protecting, the people he feels like he’s letting down every minute he isn’t out there trying to make the world safer—well… “Yes,” he says, “I would, sir.”_

_Pierce studies his face for a long moment, as if there’s something specific he’s looking for. Then he nods, more to himself than to Bucky, and sets a folder on the tray table by the bed, sliding it closer so Bucky can reach it with his right hand. The folder is red, with a black star stamped on the front. “Sergeant Barnes,” he says, “I’d like to talk to you about Project Winter Soldier.”_

 

Bucky looks down at the blossom of bright red blood soaking through the wet fabric of his shirt. _Fuck me, goddamn Mandarin sent a sniper to take down anybody who survived,_ he thinks, and his spinning brain adds, _That’s smart. Good strategy,_ before he falls down on the wet sand.

He’s bleeding. He should really probably do something about that. He presses his left hand to the wound, briefly wondering why he doesn’t feel the blood until he remembers that the metal had has no sensors for _wet_ and _dry._ He looks down, and blood is seeping between the metal fingers. It’s going to congeal in the plates and be _impossible_ to clean out later, he thinks, and for no reason at all, he has to fight down a surge of hysterical laughter.

Then the shock recedes enough for the pain to kick in, and nothing is funny at all.

Somebody is walking toward him, blurring in and out of focus as he lies still on the sand, watching. The figure is covered from head to toe in black body armor; he can see short-cropped brown hair, tactical glasses and a mask very much like the gear he used with the Army, black Kevlar vest, black pants, black boots. Whoever this is, they walk like they’ve got all the time in the world, and, fuck, they _do,_ because what the hell is Bucky going to do except lie there and bleed out? This asshole is a professional carrying a—he looks at the gun—probably a Barrett M82; so, yeah. They won’t come within reach of his metal arm until they’ve put a bullet between his eyes.

Bucky has been in positions where he’s thought he was going to die before, but this… There’s no way out this time, and isn’t it just the _perfect_ irony that he’s going to die on the wrong side of a sniper scope. There isn’t even time to try to remember any prayers or confess his sins or whatever he should be doing right now, so, failing that, he just closes his eyes and tries to fill his mind up with the people he loves. His sisters: Becca, always the strong one, pulling the family together in every crisis; Lizzie, with her boundless enthusiasm; Meg, smart as a whip and out to change the world. Little Jason and Emily, who are barely starting to figure out the people they’re going to grow into; he was looking forward, so much, to seeing how they both turn out. Sam, Clint, Tasha, Bruce, Pepper, and yeah, okay, even fucking Tony, all of them his friends and fellow soldiers in the good fight. And Steve, of course. He pulls up a memory from a couple of mornings ago, before all the shit hit the fan, and clings to it: Steve lying across his chest with his arms around him, still three-quarters in a dream and mumbling sleepily about butter rationing, of all the weird adorable things, while a streak of morning sunshine lights up the faint dusting of freckles across his cheeks and bleaches his eyelashes gold.

God, he’s going to be so unbelievably pissed that Bucky got his dumb ass killed. Bucky just hopes he’ll eventually forgive him.

The sniper will reach him any second, and Bucky is focusing so hard on thinking about Steve, and _not_ wondering whether he’ll have time to feel pain after the bullet goes through his head, that he almost doesn’t hear the sound that saves his life. It’s a distinctive sound, and once you hear it, you never forget it; it’s the metallic ringing sound of a very large hammer striking a human body, and it’s followed, a few seconds later, by the _smack_ of the handle meeting a hand as the hammer returns to its owner.

Bucky opens his eyes and looks up... and up some more; he forgot how insanely _big_ this guy is. He feels like he ought to be able to say something clever, but all he comes up with is, “You couldn’t have done that earlier?”

Thor kneels on the sand beside him, sliding a hand behind his back and raising him up, which makes Bucky cry out in pain. “You’re sorely wounded,” he says.

“No shit,” Bucky gasps. This is a hell of a slim thread of hope to hang his life on, but—“Can you call S.H.I.E.L.D.? Or take me to them?”

“You need healing beyond what your realm can offer, my friend.” Thor sets his jaw as if he’s making a decision. Bucky knows the expression because he sees it on Steve all the time: an act is about to be committed here that will be both noble and stupid. “Hold tight to me,” he says, and doesn’t even grunt as he lifts him up in what amounts to a bridal carry. Bucky has just enough time to think it’s completely unfair that he’s finally up close and personal with those literally godly pecs right when he isn’t in any shape to appreciate it, and then Thor shouts, “Heimdall, open the Bifrost!” and Bucky realizes what Thor is about to do.

“Wait,” he tries to protest, “no, you gotta tell Steve,” but everything is already going all rainbowy and weird and Bucky blacks out somewhere between Malibu and Asgard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Readers, it’s been a rough week, and I want to thank you for every time you’ve engaged with this story, which is currently on the short list of things keeping me functional. And not just kudos or lovely notes (which sometimes I don't/can't answer but be assured I see and am delighted by each one), but also if you're following along and/or yelling incoherently at Steve inside your own head.
> 
> I made a few minor corrections to previous chapters (changed the year of the story from 2014 to 2013, when IM3 actually came out; took out a mention that Bucky was in a hospital in Kabul as further research indicated they'd probably send him to Germany). And then I probably introduced 900 new errors into this chapter, so if you know something I don't, holler.
> 
> Here’s a [reference video](https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=233&v=Yd3YyTq1K0Y) for knife tricks.
> 
>  Hat tip to robyngoodfellow for brainstorming, telling me to get back to work, and as always, at least one great line of dialogue.


	12. Chapter 12

Steve Rogers’ body is burning.

It’s 1926 and he’s sick with scarlet fever. His mother has already called in every favor she could wrangle from the doctors she works with and the medicine isn’t helping, so now it’s down to Father Connolly. It’s not the first time he’s had Extreme Unction in his not-quite-eight years of life, but there’s a lot more praying this time than last time, so maybe it means he’s been exceptionally bad and needs more forgiveness. He tries to pay attention to the words, but it’s hard—his throat is so raw he can’t swallow, and he’s dizzy, and he’s _so hot._ His mother has piled every blanket she owns on top of him; he keeps pushing them off and she keeps putting them back on and he wants to tell her not to, because it’s—

—It’s 1943 and a Hydra factory is exploding underneath him. Peggy, light and quick on her feet, made it to the other side of the beam before it broke, but the minute he put his still-unfamiliar new weight on the metal, it sheared off the walkway and almost carried him down into the burning mess two stories below. “I’ll find another way out,” he shouts, as sweat trickles down his back. “You go, get out of here.”

“Bloody hell,” she mutters. Her makeup has smudged into thick, dark rings around her eyes and the victory curls in her hair have gone limp from the heat, and he’s never seen anyone more beautiful. Clearly and calmly, without raising her voice, she says, “Not without you, Steven. Never without you. Now stop stalling and come here.”

He stares at her and realizes: she’s telling him that he can make the jump, even though it’s—

It’s—

—It’s 2013 and it’s 1943 and he’s in a laboratory outside Miami and a secret base under Brooklyn, and they’ve shot him full of Erskine’s serum and a drug called Extremis and something foreign and merciless is searing its way through his blood, lighting up every capillary with pain, and his body is tearing and cracking and changing.

 _Good becomes great, bad becomes worse,_ Erskine told him, and he’s waiting to find out which way he’s going to go.

 

Bucky Barnes wakes up in a machine.

Well, okay, maybe it’s not a machine in the Earth sense of the word. There are no whirring gears or clanking metal parts, but the air around him feels static-charged. He’s lying on a flat surface, and a woman is standing next to him, looking at something floating in the air above him. It’s a little like one of Tony’s holographic displays, a misty, floating shape he doesn’t recognize until he tilts his head, and the mist moves with him. Then he realizes: he’s seeing his own body from below. There are surges of colors moving through the mist, and after he watches the pattern for a moment, he works out that orange corresponds to his lungs moving air into his body, green is his heart and the blood it pumps, and the occasional flare of red is his brain shooting a message through his nervous system. It’s obviously not a visual designed by humans.

The left arm is missing from the projection, but he tests it by making a fist, and a series of clanks along his forearm confirms that it’s still functional, so it looks like the imaging device only understands organic parts. Huh.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing up at a dark, ragged streak that runs through the image, and suddenly Thor is there, grasping his wrist and pressing it back to the hard surface he’s lying on.

“Try not to move overmuch, my friend,” he says, and Bucky abruptly realizes that he’s never seen Thor out of uniform before. He’s got a brown cloak-type thing wrapped over his shoulders instead of the cape—Bucky really envies his ability to pull off a cape—and he’s wearing what must be his everyday clothes, dark and plain, no flashy armor in sight. Well, Bucky has been stripped to the waist and his guts are on display, so it seems only fair that he’s getting to see Thor in the Asgardian equivalent of sweatpants. “I present the Lady Eir, the finest physician in the Nine Realms.”

“Hey, Eir,” Bucky says. “I got shot.”

“So I understand,” Eir says, lips twitching in a half-smile. “Your wound has been treated and will heal in time.”

“You guys talk funny,” says Bucky.

Thor laughs, a big hearty belly laugh. “I see that my friend is unused to the medicines of Asgard,” he says to Eir.

“Are you saying I’m stoned?” Bucky grins. “Cool.”

Eir’s eyes flick back to the dark line piercing the—Bucky decides to stick with _hologram_ for now; he’s not really feeling up to learning Asgardian terminology at the moment. “I was cautious with the dosage,” she says. “A common Midgardian would not have woken so soon.”

“A common Midgardian should not be here at all,” a voice thunders from behind them, and Bucky cranes his neck back and gets a look at a white-haired guy who _is_ wearing armor, and also a helmet that covers one eye. He looks old—he looks ancient—but Bucky knows menace when he sees it, and it’s just pouring off this guy.

 _Do not make an eyepatch joke do not make an eyepatch joke do not—_ “Hey, Odin,” Bucky says, “how do you know when you’re a pirate?” and that’s it, the Norse god of knowledge and whatever is going to kill him.

Or maybe not, because Thor steps between him and his father, and from the way they lock eyes, Bucky suddenly understands that whatever is going on here isn’t about him. “This man is my brother in arms,” Thor says. “He stood with me against Loki even after I brought him to harm. I owe him aid.”

“And will you help every Midgardian who suffers thus? It is the natural order of things that mortals die and Asgard endures. Return him to his realm and let him trouble this one no more.”

“Yeah, actually, please do that,” Bucky says. “The Midgardian has a boyfriend who’s probably losing his shit right about now.”

“You would deny our help to one who stood with Asgard against Loki’s army of Chitauri,” Thor begins, and it looks like he’s winding up for a good impassioned speech—sheesh, sometimes the guy really, _really_ reminds him of Steve—when Eir puts a stop to it.

“Perhaps you have both forgotten that this is a place of healing, and that when this man passed through its doors, he became _my_ responsibility,” she says, in a tone so sharp that even Bucky, who she’s defending, kind of wants to find something to hide behind. “In any event, my lord king, something of this mortal bears closer examination.” She points to the ugly mark in the middle of the hologram, and Bucky finally clues in that it’s the damage done by the bullet: a small round entry hole in his chest, widening inside his body down to the exit wound. “See, here, at the edges? The damage has already begun to knit.”

“As it should,” Thor says.

“No. Faster than it should. By only a little, but perhaps enough to have saved his life today. This man is no mere Midgardian. He is something more.”

“’Scuse me,” Bucky says, _“he_ can hear you guys, you know. And yeah, I’m healthier than average. I’m an Avenger. Tony Stark designed a custom workout for me and we do team training three times a week. But I’m not superpowered or anything. I’m just a human in really good condition. …Well, I was, before I got shot. And aside from the missing arm. But you know what I mean.”

Eir looks at him, then looks at the hologram again, where it stops abruptly at his left shoulder. “Curious,” she says, as a pink glow comes up inside his shoulder socket. “I see deep scarring from this wound, and evidence of great pain, as I’d expect. But see these others, here—” She points at what look like faint fracture lines in his tibia from the motorcycle crash, then similar marks on ribs he cracked fighting the Chitauri, the puncture scar where the chest tube went in to reinflate his collapsed lung, the healed laceration on his hip where S.H.I.E.L.D. Medical gave him a dozen stitches after the fight with the Wrecking Crew (which Steve had fussed him out about as if he’d _intended_ to get hurt). “These should not have healed so quickly, nor so well.”

“So, what, I got super awesome healing powers right after I lost the arm? That’s useful,” Bucky says dryly.

“Did you?” says Eir, and then Bucky’s sarcasm evaporates as his jaw drops.

“Those sons of bitches,” he says. “They told me those shots were _penicillin.”_

 

Steve comes back to himself with a full-body shiver as the air around him cools rapidly. Then he realizes, no, it’s not just a draft, or a fan kicking on; what he felt was the heat of his own skin dissipating all at once, like a fever breaking. Only fevers don’t usually leave his body steaming. He can actually see the sweat evaporating off his arms when he looks down at them. Then he realizes that they’re still his same old arms, stick-thin against a small, frail body, and feels maybe the most intense disappointment of his artificially long life.

Until he turns his hand over and watches the orange glow flicker under his fingertips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a short update due to recent travels. (So many travels. Almost done, and then I'm staying home for a good long time.) Thank you for your patience. :)
> 
> Also, I made a Tumblr for fic posts, asks, prompts, etc. Because it seems like that's the thing to do? IDK if I'm doing any of this right, honestly, but either way, it’s [here.](http://follow-the-sun-fanfic.tumblr.com/) Come send me asks or prompts if you feel like it; it might be really fun to do some one-shots of the Shrinky crew and/or Team Stegosaurus.


	13. Chapter 13

Tony Stark doesn’t spend a lot of time on self-doubt in general, but today, he can’t help but feel like his recent life choices might have been a _special_ kind of stupid.

Not that he considers this the worst day of his life, not by a long shot. For a while the strongest contender for the Anthony and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day award was the time he woke up in a cave in Afghanistan with shrapnel creeping toward his aorta; then that was edged out of the top slot by the day with the _(don’t think about them)_ Chitauri and the _(don’t think about it)_ nuclear warhead that he had to re-route through the _(especially don’t think about that)_ alien wormhole. So a day when a terrorist blows up his house with him in it and a couple hours later a semi-functional Jarvis wakes him up as he’s about to crash land a badly damaged Iron Man suit outside Rose Hill, Tennessee? That barely cracks the top five. And granted, that was all before the nine-year-old owner of the workshop he’s just borrowed decided to show up and point a potato gun at him, but still. Top four, absolute maximum.

He’s been running on autopilot for a long time—no food, no coffee, no alcohol, and he wishes he was a little less self-aware about which of those three things is the biggest problem at the moment—but he sucks it all up long enough to talk the kid into putting down the spud gun and agreeing not to rat him out for his B&E. Then, and only then, Tony moves aside and allows the kid to catch a glimpse of the suit, which gets a more gratifying reaction from him than it does from most adults. “Oh my God! That… is that… Is that _Iron Man?”_ the kid says, as wide-eyed with delight as Tony would’ve been at that age if someone had presented him with a working Star Destroyer.

“Technically,” Tony points out, _“I’m_ Iron Man.”

“Technically,” the kid says, shoving a newspaper into his hands, “you’re dead.”

Tony unfolds the paper and reads the headline: **Mandarin Attack: Tony Stark, Captain America presumed dead.**

Tony sits down hard.

But Barnes got out of the house. Didn’t he?

 _Didn’t_ he?

Shit.

“That’s some piss-poor copyediting,” he hears himself say, as if at a distance. “Sounds like they’re saying _I’m_ Captain America and I’m dead. Couldn’t throw in an Oxford comma? Listen, kid, everybody knows you can’t trust the media. And what is this, an actual newspaper? You’re supposed to be the Internet generation, okay? Get with the program.”

He’s talking too fast, and the kid looks worried, which makes more sense when he tries to inhale and can’t. His lungs are making a noise like Steve’s during a full-blown asthma attack _(and thinking about Rogers and how he’s probably reacting to this is a GREAT IDEA, thanks a lot, genius brain, really appreciate that one)_.

“Are you having a panic attack?” the kid asks, wide-eyed.

“Kid, you’re the reason smart people don’t reproduce, did you know that?”

“Do you have medication?”

“Nope.”

“Do you need to be on medication?”

“Probably.”

“Do you have PTSD?”

“I don’t think so.”

Are you going completely mental? Should I call 911? Should I—”

“Kid, you are _freaking me out_ right now,” Tony explodes.

“I’m sorry!”

“You should be. Aaargh.” Tony puts his head on his hands and sucks in the deepest breath he can, waiting for the spasms in his chest to stop. “Your fault,” he says to the kid, when his heart slows down enough that it no longer feels like it might pop the arc reactor out of its socket. “That one’s on you. Don’t do that again.”

“I don’t even know what I did!”

“Then don’t do anything. No, you know what? Scratch that, I have a job for you. Here’s what I need,” Tony says. “A laptop, a digital watch, a cell phone, the pneumatic activator from your bazooka over there, a map of town, a large spring, and a tuna fish sandwich.”

The kid blinks several times, slowly. Tony can see the wheels spinning, though, coming around to the conclusion that getting to help Iron Man save the world for the price of crap he’s got lying around the house is a pretty sweet deal. “Are you gonna kill him?” he asks, as he crosses the room to start disassembling the potato gun. “The Mandarin, I mean?”

Tony hesitates for a moment. Because as strange as it seems to a cynic like himself, the thing about running around with Steve Rogers, even the Honey I Shrunk the Captain version, is that the guy has a way of getting inside his head. There’ve been moments when he’s started to think that maybe there’s something to his dad’s whole Captain America shtick—not the patriotism angle, which is all marketing spin, and badly outdated at that, but the _be a better man_ part of it. Steve makes him feel like maybe he’s like more than a smart guy in a souped-up tin can; like someday it might not only be possible for him to run with the truth-and-justice crowd, but like he might actually almost believe in it.

Only, if the news is accurate— _if,_ because he wasn’t bullshitting the kid about the media; it could easily turn out that Barnes is perfectly fine and the Blount County _Daily Times_ is just trying to make a few nickels on a **Cap Lives!** headline tomorrow, but still, _if_ —then it’s on him, as surely as if it was his finger on the trigger. If Barnes is alive, he’s still got a chance at redemption. But if Barnes is dead, Tony is never going to be able to look any of the other Avengers, and especially not Rogers, in the eye again.

“Well, kid,” he says, his voice hard, “let’s just say this. If I can’t save my friend… then I’m sure as hell going to avenge him.”

 

Bucky can’t sleep.

It’s ridiculous. He hasn’t had coffee since before the Mandarin attack (Thor says most Asgardians think it’s too bitter; jeez, some “advanced civilization” they’re running up here) and he’s pumped full of painkillers that are designed for beings that are a lot hardier than humans, even enhanced ones. He should be out like a light, but here he is, wide awake, all jangly nerves and racing thoughts. It’s the reason he’s dragged himself out of a surprisingly uncomfortable bed in the palace’s medical wing and onto a stone bench in a massive open patio. He’s surrounded by arches and columns that are built on a scale humans don’t usually achieve with cathedrals, and the atmosphere of Asgard must be thinner than earth’s or something, because the stars look unnaturally bright next to anything he’s seen on earth, even in the middle of a desert. Everything he’s seen on this whole planet so far looks like the love child of Camelot and Arrakis.

He _is_ on another planet, though. He, Bucky Barnes, who barely scraped a C+ in high school physics, is in real, actual outer space. He’d be geeking out on that like crazy if he wasn’t kind of distracted by the whole issue of his perforated liver.

“So this is the Midgardian who confounds the All-father,” says a voice behind him.

Bucky doesn’t jump, because as soft as the woman’s footsteps are, he still heard her coming—which makes him wonder whether she meant for him to, or if that’s a side benefit of having super-hearing. It’s a thing he’s never really thought about, how his senses are so much more fine-tuned now than they were before Project Winter Soldier.

In retrospect, it seems crazy that he missed it, but then again, it’s not as if Bucky went through a transition like Steve’s where he put on ten inches and a hundred pounds of muscle in an afternoon. (Maybe that’s because he only got the serum, not the vita-rays, or maybe his body was already close to its peak possible condition, rather than being stunted by constant illness and malnutrition; that’s one for the scientists to hash out, not him.) The point is, he wasn’t _looking_ for evidence that he’d been experimented on. All he’d ever wanted, since the day he lost his arm, was to get through his rehabilitation and find a way to get back to work. Which made it easy for him to tell himself, for instance, that his aim went from good to great because the metal arm was so steady, without even a pulse to jostle it, and not because his eyes were sharper; or that he put on thirty pounds of muscle in six weeks because they had him on a high-protein diet and exercise plan as part of his treatment, not because his metabolism was suddenly turned up to eleven. But it’s like that optical illusion with the vase that turns into two faces; now that he’s seen it, he’ll never unsee it again.

He has so many questions. Like, why did they pick _him_ for what he can only assume is S.H.I.E.L.D.’s new super-secret super soldier program? He’d love to think it was coincidence, but the more he thinks about it, the more he suspects it’s because of his record as a sniper—not his skill, although he’s not kidding himself that he was really good even before the program, but the fact that he wasn’t in the habit of questioning the chain of command. That he was willing to kill whoever they told him to kill without examining the orders too closely. If they hadn’t shut the program down—and if he hadn’t met Steve, who’s changed his thinking so much—would he ever have started questioning whether all those lives he took were necessary, or would he still be acting like their mindless killing machine?

And speaking of Steve, how about the fact that S.H.I.E.L.D. has been lying to him about the viability of recreating the super-soldier serum? Alexander Pierce was involved with Project Winter Soldier, and Pierce is tighter with S.H.I.E.L.D. than anybody but Fury, so it’s not as if nobody at S.H.I.E.L.D. _knew._ If Pierce wanted super-soldiers so badly, why withhold whatever knockoff serum they’ve got from the _only_ previous success story, especially when Steve was practically begging them to experiment on him again? Bucky has turned this over and over in his head, and the only thing he can think of is that somebody is deliberately lying to Steve because he  _does_ have a reputation for questioning orders, and as long as he stays small and weak, he isn’t a threat to anybody.

Which begs the question: what happens when they realize that Steve Rogers doesn’t _need_ superpowers to be a threat?

With an effort, he wrenches his attention back to the woman in front of him. She looks middle-aged, although he doesn’t know if that means she’s fifty years old or five thousand. The way she’s standing—back straight, head high—makes him think _authority,_ but her eyes make him think _kind._ There’s only one person Thor has mentioned who meets that description. He pushes himself to his feet and puts on his best charm-the-ladies smile. “And you’re the most beautiful woman in Asgard, so you must be Frigga.”

Frigga’s smile make it clear that she sees through his bullshit, but that she’s giving him points for effort. “Please, sit,” she says, and when he does, gratefully, she takes a seat on the bench beside him. “I had hoped to speak with you before your return to Midgard. It is no small thing when the Prince of Asgard contends with his father over a mortal.”

“Yeah, I understand this is the second time he’s gone up against his dad over one of us,” Bucky says. “Personally, I think Odin’s really overreacting to the whole thing. Jane’s great, and Thor is lucky to have her.”

“You’ve met this Jane Foster, then?” Frigga says, and Bucky can’t help cracking a grin, remembering how own mother used the same overly casual tone when she asked him if he knew some guy Becca was dating.

“Yeah, S.H.I.E.L.D.—the people I work for—they bring her in sometimes as a consultant, so we got to talk a few times. Everybody knows she’s unbelievably smart, but she’s also a really nice, funny, interesting person.” And a huge nerd, but that only adds to the appeal for Bucky. He hadn’t expected a bigshot scientist like her to have anything to say to him, but it turned out they both love classic sci-fi, and they’d spent so long trading book recommendations that Steve actually got a little jealous, which was a hilarious thing to watch. That reminds him: “By the way, I wanted to say that I hope I didn’t offend your husband earlier when I mentioned that I was dating a guy.”

“Should that have offended him?”

“Well, _I_ don’t think so, but he seems pretty traditional, and I don’t know what the rules are in Asgard. I didn’t want to give him a worse impression of us than he already has.” Besides which, under ordinary circumstances, Bucky would happily punch anyone who has a problem with who he loves, but unlike certain former Captain Americas, he does try not to pick fights when he has a bullet hole in one or more internal organs.

Frigga smiles. “Asgardians live for thousands of years. With so much time, do you think we would not avail ourselves of many different pleasures?”

 _Well._ Bucky is officially never going to run out of things to think about in the shower again. He must be blushing, because Frigga takes pity on him and says, “Am I keeping you from your rest?”

“No, I tried to sleep, but I couldn’t shut off my brain. Do Asgardians get insomnia?”

“We are more like humans than you think,” Frigga says, with a faint smile. “I wake, and I worry for the realm, and for my husband and my sons. So I come here.”

“Both of them?” Bucky asks. “I don’t mean to be rude, but Loki… he did a lot of damage to my world. He hurt one of my friends and killed another. A lot of people would say he’s getting exactly what he deserves.”

“Your world has every right to be angry—to be furious—with Loki for what he did. And I would not see him set loose to do as he pleases on your world or any other. But there is more to his story than you know, and not all the mistakes were his.” Her mouth is a hard line. “When Thor erred, he was offered a path to redemption. And yet the All-father, in his wisdom, would see Loki waste his years and his talents in a prison cell.”

“Yeah, Odin does seem to have kind of a blind spot where his kids are concerned.”

It’s out before Bucky thinks about it, and when he does, he’s horrified, but lucky for him, Frigga just laughs. “I would not say that in Odin’s hearing.”

“Oh, trust me, I don’t have that much of a death wish. So… you still love Loki? Even after everything he did?”

“With my whole heart.” Frigga gives Bucky a look that goes straight through him. “Are you asking me about my son, Bucky Barnes? Or are you really asking about yourself?”

“I, uh. Wow. You’re good,” Bucky says. He’s not going to be able to bluff his way out of this one. “I’m afraid it’s going to turn out I’ve been working for the bad guys all along. And the thing is, even if I wasn’t doing it on purpose, I was still doing it. I didn’t ask the right questions. I didn’t _look_ hard enough. I just let it happen. Doesn’t that make it sort of my fault that it did?”

Frigga doesn’t answer him directly, just looks at him for a long, quiet moment. Then she holds out her hands to him and says, “May I?” When Bucky nods, she pulls him into her arms, resting his head on her shoulder. She strokes his hair a few times, and then she starts to sing, softly, some song that sounds familiar even though Bucky is sure he’s never heard it before, in a language he feels like he almost knows. It’s not magic—well, he doesn’t think it’s magic—but he feels his eyes getting heavy, his brain slowing down its restless spin.

He doesn’t remember getting up and going back to bed, but he sleeps better than he has in a long time. And when Thor comes to find him in the morning, he remembers something else Frigga whispered in his ear, and says, “I want to talk to Heimdall.”

 

“Heimdall, my friend,” Thor booms, leading Bucky into a really impressive room. Okay, supporting Bucky as they walk into the room. Okay, maybe mostly carrying Bucky into—well, the point is, it’s a huge round room that seems to be made entirely of gold, with a raised dais in the center and enormous rotating circles on the walls that look like the gears of some massive machine. Having seen a little of how Asgard operates, it wouldn’t surprise Bucky to find out that that’s exactly what they are. “I would ask a boon of you.”

Heimdall looks at Bucky, and Bucky finds himself looking back at yet another massive guy in a suit of armor (although he’s refreshingly non-Nordic, thank God; not that he doesn’t appreciate the pale blonde aesthetic, but Asgard is positively overrun with them). There’s something weird about the pupils of his dark eyes, and Bucky suddenly has a terrible realization. “When you said he could see people on earth,” he murmurs to Thor, “I thought you meant you guys had a telescope or a surveillance drone or something.”

“Heimdall needs no more than his eyes to see anyone in the Nine Realms,” Thor says proudly.

“Wow, and I thought the Patriot Act was bad.” Thor looks at him blankly, and Bucky sighs. “Just so I know how freaked out to be on a scale of one to ten, is this science or magic?”

“In this place they are one and the same,” Thor says. “Heimdall keeps watch over my Midgardian allies, as well as my Jane and her friends. He saw you in mortal peril and opened the Bifrost to me.”

Bucky nods. “I know I owe you guys my life,” he says, to both of them, “and I’m really grateful for that. And I understand that it takes a lot of power to make your… gateway thing… work, but—”

“There is one at home who he loves and fears for,” Thor says, and Heimdall nods.

“You wish to know of Steven Rogers, the former Captain of America?”

Bucky nods. “I didn’t get to tell him where I was going before I left, and he kind of has no chill when he thinks somebody he loves is in trouble. I mean, you should hear what he did to the Nazis after they killed his girlfriend in 1944. I just need to make sure the other Avengers are keeping him from doing anything stupid.”

“I understand,” Heimdall says. “I will seek him for you.”

Heimdall turns toward what Bucky sincerely hopes is just a window, and not what it looks like—an opening that goes straight out into space. Bucky isn’t sure what he’s expecting, but there are no lightning flashes or sparkles or anything; Heimdall really does just _look,_ fixing his eyes on some point that not even Bucky’s improved sniper eyes can hope to see. He stands absolutely still like that for a minute, watching. Then he turns toward Thor, and even though Bucky only sees his expression for an instant, it’s enough. “My lord, perhaps we should—”

“No,” Bucky says, sharply irritated. “No way. Just because I’m not five thousand years old or whatever, you do _not_ get to treat me like a kid. What is it?”

The fact that Heimdall doesn’t seem to be hesitating to tell him, just thinking about how to put it, is the only reason Bucky takes a deep breath and doesn’t scream. “You are no longer fully human,” he says.

“Yeah, so I’m told, but—”

“Neither is he,” says Heimdall.

“Thor,” Bucky says, in a tone that he hopes makes it clear that he’s more than willing to fight everyone in Asgard if he doesn’t get his way, “take me home _now.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, my friends, sorry this update took absurdly long to write. Life... *sigh* It makes it even worse that the first half of this chapter was supposed to be the second half of the previous chapter, and I still don't feel like I did Harley justice. And then I got almost all the way through the rest of the chapter, realized I was missing a huge opportunity, and ended up rewriting the entire middle. 
> 
> Now that my crazy June-July travels are over, I should be able to get some more writing done. \o/


	14. Chapter 14

“We have a problem,” Natasha says.

Sam opens one eye. It’s been a long couple of days of search and rescue—well, search, anyway—and as hope of finding either Tony or Bucky dwindled, his role has become less first responder and more counselor as the Avengers started getting hit by the realization that this isn’t some bad dream they might still wake up from. Two of their own, gone before they even knew there was trouble… this is a loss that won’t just shake the team, but might shatter it beyond recovery.

And Sam doesn’t want to sound like he as the right to some kind of deeper, more meaningful grief than the others, either—he can’t even get his mind around what poor Steve and Pepper are going through, and while he’ll miss Tony, and grieve for him, Sam can’t claim that the two of them were particularly close. But Bucky… Sam remembers Bucky from when he first got out of the Army, wandering around like a lost puppy, trying to figure out who he was without weapons and orders; he watched the good man inside the soldier claw his way back out and start living again, find his feet in the world, even fall in weird, sweet love under what should have been impossible circumstances. Just because they’d never teamed up to punch bad guys before Sam joined the Avengers doesn’t mean they hadn’t already been through a war.

Losing Bucky is way too much like losing Riley all over again. Right now, Sam has exactly one way to deal with that: he’s built a wall around his pain, and he’s focusing all his energy on closing out the search effort, then making sure the remaining Avengers get through whatever horrible memorial service the powers-that-be at S.H.I.E.L.D. dream up. It’s a short-term coping mechanism at best, but once they’re out of the public eye, there’ll be time to take that wall down, brick by brick, and deal with Sam Wilson’s personal grief. Right now, he’s got enough problems without adding any more to the stack.

Unfortunately, Sam knows that the price of dating Natasha Romanoff is giving up the illusion that he’s in charge of anything. “Just tell me it isn’t aliens,” he says. “I can’t deal with aliens today.”

“It’s Steve. He’s gone.”

“What do you mean, gone?” Sam doesn’t think _dead;_ if the worst had happened, Natasha wouldn’t sugarcoat it. Besides, for once, Sam agrees with the S.H.I.E.L.D. psychiatrists that Rogers isn’t a suicide risk. A _revenge_ risk, maybe, but this isn’t 1945 and he isn’t a super-soldier anymore; Sam suspects he’d lay down his life in a minute, but only if he can take the Mandarin down with him, and he’s smart enough to do the math.

Natasha holds up her sleek black Starkphone. “He texted me that he wanted some time alone. I got worried and checked his room. He’d already left the hotel.”

“So he went back to New York—”

“We both know better than that.” There’s a short pause. “I shouldn’t have left him alone.”

Sam doesn’t bother to tell Natasha it’s not her fault; guilt doesn’t work like that. “You tried his phone?”

“He turned it off.”

“So you can’t find it?”

She gives him a _don’t insult me_ look. “I’m running a trace now. Even if he threw the phone away, I can retrieve it and find out who he spoke to last.” Natasha’s face is grim. “Whatever he thinks he’s doing, I’ve lost two members of this team already. I owe Stark and Barnes better than losing a third.”

“I’ll get my suit,” Sam is saying, when there’s a sudden pounding on the hotel room door.

Natasha glares at it and mutters in Russian, and Sam doesn’t have to speak the language to know it’s something along the lines of _If this is news media of any sort, so help me._ But neither of them is prepared for the response: “For fuck’s sake, Natalia, I’m not some press vulture. Let me in, Steve’s in trouble and I need your help to get him back before we lose him for good.”

Sam feels absolutely no shame that Natasha is better at rolling with punches than he is, because _nobody_ is better than Natasha at that. He’s still gaping at the door, trying to process this new development, when Natasha lunges across the room, positioning herself behind the door with a pistol—where the hell did she have that stashed? Wait, never mind, Sam doesn’t want to know—in her hands. “If that’s really you, James, then prove it!” she shouts.

There’s a brief, horrified silence. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“Trust me, B, she is very serious,” Sam shouts back. He doesn’t want to think about what happened in Natasha’s past that makes her first instinct to think _imposter,_ but he’s definitely not fighting her on this.

“Come on, you two, I don’t have time for this ‘what’s the password’ bullshit. Steve’s in trouble and I need your help, so stop messing around and open the goddamn door before I put my fist through it.” When neither of them responds, a moment passes, and then Bucky says, very quietly, “Weisinger, Ramirez, Forrest. Okay, Sam?”

Sam hasn’t heard Bucky say any of those names since he first came to the VA—not when he was awake, anyway. Sam knows full well that the teammates he lost still haunt his dreams. “It’s him,” he says. “Let him in.”

Natasha trusts him, or at least trusts him enough to open the door, and for a second after she does, all Sam can do is stare. It’s definitely Bucky standing there, and obviously it’s great that he’s alive, but he looks terrible. “Whoa, man, what happened to you?”

“What _happened?”_ Bucky pushes his hair out of his eyes so he can glare at Sam more effectively. “Uh, let’s see, a theater blew up on me, a house fell on me, I got shot, and, oh, I’ve been to Asgard, that’s a thing that happened. How’ve you been?”

If Sam wasn’t already convinced, he would be now, because no matter how dire things are, Bucky Barnes always finds time to be a smartass. “Are you telling me Thor showed up?”

“No, I took an Uber. Of course Thor showed up. He’d be here now, but apparently he’s in deep shit with his old man and there’s some kind of space war he’s supposed to fight in, so I told him don’t worry, the humans can take it from here, and my friends back home definitely won’t stand around grilling me when I tell them that Steve’s trying to turn himself back into a super soldier. Can we go?”

“How badly are you hurt?” Natasha says sharply.

“They have magic in Asgard, they patched me up, I’m fine. Are you guys not hearing the part where Steve’s in trouble?”

Natasha frowns. “Can you give us a location?”

“Yeah. There’s a lab outside Miami, a place called Advanced Idea Mechanics. They call it a research center, but we’re probably gonna have to fight our way in past some enhanced people. Come _on.”_

Sam and Natasha have reached a point in their relationship where they can hold whole conversations with a look. It’s obvious to both of them that Bucky shouldn’t be going anywhere but a hospital; it’s just as obvious that there’ll be no reasoning with him until Steve is found. Besides, it’s hard to refuse a guy who you thought was dead until five minutes ago. He picks up the case that holds his suit and his wings, and the two of them follow Bucky out the door.

 

“Again?” Steve says, when the lab technician comes back into the recovery room to take another vial of blood out of him. This is the sixth one since the procedure was complete. Or is it the seventh? “The procedure worked. I don’t understand what it is you’re still looking at.”

“We need to keep testing to make sure the formula is stable,” the tech tells him, and Steve tries not to sigh.

The couple of hours he’s spent in the AIM lab since the procedure have been oddly reminiscent of the first day after he got the serum—except that this time, he’s not keeping his hands carefully folded in his lap, afraid to move in case his newfound strength breaks something. And instead replaying Abraham Erskine’s death in his head, he’s thinking about how he’s going to hunt down the Mandarin.

He hasn’t bulked up to his previous size and strength, which would have made the process easier, he has to admit. There’s something to be said for using an enemy’s size against them, but there’s a lot more to be said for having a lot of mass to throw at your opponent. He’s definitely stronger, though. He’s breathing better; his crooked spine is straighter, which makes him stand a little taller; and the AIM doctor who checked him out immediately after the procedure said that she couldn’t find any trace of arrhythmia. Oh, and incidentally, he now has the ability to superheat the cells in his own body and release that heat in a controlled burst. Which means, basically, that he has a superpower now, and it’s fire. 

He can melt the Mandarin’s guns to slag. He can explode the terrorists’ own ordnance in their faces. Hell, if that’s not satisfying enough, he can immolate the Mandarin himself. He can grab him by the throat and boil the blood inside his body, if he wants to.

Steve doesn’t _want_ to, exactly. He knows that both Erskine and Peggy would be ashamed of him right now; both of them would agree that the Mandarin needs to be stopped, but they’d tell him he’s talking about revenge, not justice. If he survives this, he’s going to have to face some hard truths about who he is and what lines he’s willing to cross.

But at this point, he really just wants to get on with it.

“How much longer is this going to take?” he asks. When the tech just shoots him a withering look and doesn’t answer, he says, “Hey. I think I have the right to know how much longer you expect me to stay here.”

“Mr. Rogers,” the tech says, bored, “you’re here until Dr. Killian personally says you can go.”

“Fine. Where’s Killian? I’ll talk to him.”

The tech raises an eyebrow. “You really don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?” he asks, but the tech is already capping the vial and turning away. “Hey,” he repeats, and when the tech ignores him, he reaches out and grabs his sleeve. _“Get what?”_

The tech shakes him off, taking a quick step back and reaching for the door handle. Steve gets there first. That’s the thing people don’t realize: small means quick. “What’s going on?” he demands.

The palms of both of his hands are pressed against the door, and he can feel the heat building under his skin. He’s leaving scorch marks on the metal, and the tech is starting to look alarmed. He pulls a little radio device out of a pocket of the lab coat; Steve makes a grab for it, but he’s already pressed a button.

Shit.

“Pal,” Steve says, quietly, “I want you to know I’m sorry about this,” and then he uses a move he learned from Peggy Carter: he kicks the guy in the crotch. While he’s doubled over, Steve grabs the device in one fist and quietly incinerates it. Then he opens the door.

An alarm is blaring somewhere, and standing in the hallway are two guards in bright yellow suits that look like some combination of fire protection and biohazard gear. They both have weapons; Steve recognizes one as a fairly standard firearm and one as a tranquilizer rifle loaded with chemical darts. Based on what he knows about Extremis, the darts are the far greater threat.

“Just tell me this,” he says, putting his hands up in a surrender gesture. “Did Killian ever intend to let me leave, or was he hoping to activate the Erskine serum, get my DNA, and then kill me?”

“Nobody plans to kill you, Steve,” says a new voice. There’s a dark-haired woman coming around the corner. No safety gear, just a lab coat; that means she has a lot of faith in the guards, or at least in the dart gun. “You don’t kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. And believe me, if we can isolate even a trace of the serum in your cells, you’re a gold mine.”

“Who the hell are you?”

“Maya Hansen, R&D. I created Extremis.” She looks at him critically. “The process obviously didn’t yield the results we hoped for, but I think you’ve still got a lot to be pleased about. Yes, Killian brought you here hoping to turn you back into a super soldier. And yes, if he got that, he planned to bully and intimidate you into working for him. I told him it wouldn’t work on you.”

“So it was never even a _little_ bit about helping people,” Steve says. “It was about, what? Power? An army of enhanced soldiers working for him?”

“More or less. Some of us still care about the science, though. I’ve already helped you, Steve. You can feel it for yourself. Your lungs, your heart… Stay here for a few weeks, let me keep studying you, help me stabilize the Extremis formula enough for mass production, and think about how many other people you can help in the process.”

Which would be a pretty compelling argument, if she wasn’t lying through her teeth. “A gold mine, huh?” he says. “Just a trace of the serum, in all the blood you’ve taken from me, and then you’ve got Extremis _and_ the Erskine formula. I’m sorry, Maya, but that’s too much power for anyone to have a monopoly on.”

Hansen sighs. Then she cuts her eyes to the guy with the tranq gun and says, “Do it.”

Steve is in motion before the words leave her lips, going in for a low tackle on the guy with the tranq gun. A bullet from the second AIM grunt’s gun thwacks into him—Christ, it hurts a _lot_ more to get shot in such a small body, with so much less muscle to slow down the bullet—but he pushes the pain aside, trusting Extremis to repair the damage. He lets off a blast of heat as his weight, slight as it is, carries both of them to the ground; Tranq Gun Guy screams—apparently he’s overwhelmed the fire protection of the suit—and Hansen runs, and he’s up and moving before Rifle Guy can get off another shot, ripping the gun out of his hands through pure element of surprise and slamming it into the back of his head. Lucky for him, the suits don’t offer much in the way of protection from a direct blow.

The rifle casing is melting in his hands, but that’s okay. He’s prepared to do this the hard way.

He’s made a horrifying mistake in letting Hansen and Killian have access to his blood, that’s obvious, but it’s not too late for him to fix it. Didn’t Bruce tell him once that high heat would destroy a DNA sample? Well, that’s something he’s got plenty of.

Alarms are blaring throughout the facility now, and while he stands there, catching his breath—which is a whole lot easier now; in fact, he’s gulping so much air that it feels like an oxygen high—the overhead lights cut out and the emergency lighting kicks on. So do the sprinklers, but he can deal with that. He raises his hand and sends a blast of fire at the nearest sprinkler head, which promptly explodes into shards of metal and a cloud of steam.

There’s a sound of pounding feet behind him, and he turns. It’s a whole crew of the AIM guys in their yellow uniforms, taking up position and blocking the hall—at least ten of them, and all of them have the tranq guns, now. He ducks back into the recovery room and slams the door, which locks behind him just before something heavy crashes against it. Considering that they essentially meant to keep him prisoner here, he figures it will hold for a little while, but not for long. He casts a quick glance around at what he’s got to work with: a bed, a couple of chairs, and a small table with a round metal top. It’s not a vibranium shield, but against dart guns, it’ll do.

He can’t even feel where the bullet hit him anymore. Either Extremis offers faster healing than the serum ever did, or he’s just riding too high on adrenaline and anger. He doesn’t know if he can take all of the guys between him and the exit, but there’s one way to find out.

 

Bucky drums his metal fingers on the armrest of the seat he’s strapped into, quivering with impatience. “Can’t this thing go any faster?” he finally bursts out, even though he knows the answer. “There has to be a turbo boost or something, this is S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment, for fuck’s sake.”

“Barnes, I will turn this Quinjet around, so help me,” Clint says, from the cockpit. “We’re five minutes out from location, so just sit tight and—aw, Steve.”

“What is it?” Bucky is out of his harness and in the cockpit before Sam can grab him and drag him back into his seat.

“I should have drugged him before takeoff,” Natasha murmurs.

“Probably,” Sam agrees. But then they all see the cloud of smoke rising into the air, a mile ahead of them.

“Stevie, what did you do?” Bucky whispers, horrified.

“I really doubt that’s all Steve’s doing, B.”

“Have you _met_ Steve?”

“Not helping, Barton. Barnes, what are you doing?” Sam asks, when Bucky goes toward the back of the plane and starts rooting through the storage bins.

“Gearing up,” Bucky says, sliding on a Kevlar vest and pulling the straps tight. What he wouldn’t give for the shield right now, but failing that, he’s gonna take a lot of guns. “What, did you think I was going in there with a pocket knife?”

“You’re three steps away from falling over. You shouldn’t be going anywhere.”

“Sam, it’s—”

“It’s Steve, I know, heard you the first twelve times. God, I don’t know which of you two is worse.”

“Steve,” says Clint. “It’s not even a question.”

“Still not helping, Barton.”

Natasha sighs, follows Bucky to the back of the plane, and pulls on an access panel, which slides out to reveal a rack of guns. Even Sam’s eyebrows go up at the number and variety. Bucky grabs an M4 and a couple of pistols, considers picking up a Kalashnikov but decides against it, not because it’s overkill, but because Sam’s right; he’s already close to toppling over and he doesn’t need the extra weight dragging him down. By the time he’s got everything stowed, and Natasha has passed out earbuds they can use for comms, Clint is putting the plane down on a large, grassy lawn outside of what looks like a pretty typical office building.

Except that the back half of it is on fire.

Bucky is out of the Quinjet before the ramp touches the ground. The place looks like a kicked anthill; the people running out of the building are about equally split between office-worker types in dress casual, scientists in lab gear, and… what’s with the guys in bright yellow riot gear? If they’re supposed to be guards, they’re terrible at their jobs, scattered all over the place and turning back to fire their guns at, as far as Bucky can tell, nothing; it’ll be a miracle if nobody dies here from friendly fire. They’re all completely ignoring the Avengers, which is both good and bad, since it also means nobody is offering assistance to the good guys, or any insight as to where the bad guys are and, most importantly, where Steve is.

Bucky strides forward and clotheslines one of the yellow-suited guards who’s trying to run past, because metal arms are great for that. “Hey, what is this? What’s going on?” he demands, but the guy barely even looks at him; he just scrambles away and keeps running. Something really has these AIM guys spooked.

When he looks at the front door of the facility, he sees why.

Something—no, it’s too human-shaped not to be _somebody_ —is standing there, and they’re on fire—no, they’re made of fire—Bucky can’t tell, because there’s a haze of heat around the figure. It—he?—grabs the doorframe with both hands, tilts his head back, and takes a long breath, as if he’s bracing himself. Then there’s a burst of fire so bright that Bucky looks away for a second, momentarily blinded by the flash, and now a large part of the front of the building is blazing, too.

“Shit!” Clint says. “We have an enhanced in the field.”

“No, _really,_ Barton?” Sam yells, from somewhere overhead.

Natasha pulls her sidearm and Clint reaches for an arrow, but Bucky moves faster, lunging between them and shoving Natasha’s arm aside. “Steve,” he cries.

The figure turns toward them. Then the flames flicker and die out, and it _is_ Steve standing there, in front of a blazing building, smudged all over with ash, the little that’s left of his clothing wrecked and charred, with steam rising off his body. “Bucky?” he says. For a moment he stands there poleaxed, and then he’s running forward, faster than Bucky has ever seen him move.

Bucky lunges forward and grabs him, squeezing his eyes shut and letting a strangled sound escape him when he feels the whole length of Steve’s body pressed against him. Steve’s skin feels fever-hot to the touch, and he smells like smoke and ash and sweat, but there’s the press of his sharp chin into Bucky’s shoulder, his ribs prominent under Bucky’s flesh hand, the dip at the base of his spine under the metal one. For a long moment, neither of them speaks, because neither of them can, and then Steve says, in a voice choked with emotion, “I thought you were dead.”

“I thought you were smarter,” Bucky says. There’s no sting in the words; the surge of relief he’s feeling leaves no room for anger. “I leave you alone for like a minute, and when I get back, everything’s literally on fire! Christ, Steve, don’t ever do—fuck, what _did_ you do?”

“Something stupid. I should have listened to you. I’m sorry. Buck, how are you alive? How—”

“Tell you later, okay? C’mon, I don’t sit down, I’m gonna fall down.” Bucky loosens his grip, but he keeps his right arm slung around Steve’s shoulders while he takes a good long look at him. Steve looks okay—he looks better than Bucky has ever seen him, in fact, standing straight and breathing without effort, cheeks still flushed with heat. “How did you—did you actually manage to get yourself some fucking _superpowers?”_

“Looks that way,” Steve says, giving Bucky the lopsided smile that always makes him melt. _Figuratively_ melt, Bucky mentally amends. This is a lot to take in, especially when he’s down a couple pints of blood. And he must look like it, too, because Steve says, “Are you _really_ okay?”

Bucky manages to crack an exhausted grin. “Am now.”

“So I, for one, am delighted to have been part of this completely unnecessary rescue effort,” Clint says in Bucky’s earbud, “and I think we’re all due for a nice long debrief on both how Steve’s now a firebender _and_ how Bucky survived when Tony got murdered by a terrorist—”

“What?” Bucky says, startled. “Tony didn’t die.”

“What?” Clint echoes. “We thought you were both dead.”

“No, Tony’s fine. I mean, he was about five hours ago. According to Thor’s buddy Heimdall, he’s in Tennessee, although fuck if I know why. He hasn’t been in touch to tell you he was alive? What an asshole.”

“Neither were you,” Sam points out, exasperated.

“I was in Asgard! They have phones in Tennessee!”

“Asgard?” Steve repeats. “I was going out of my mind with grief and you were in _Asgard?”_

“It wasn’t my—okay,” Bucky says, “let’s all take a couple steps back, get in the Quinjet and get out of here, like Clint said. Because I personally have had a real shit week and I really want to go home and fuck my boyfriend like there’s no tomorrow—”

“Some thoughts are meant to be _inside_ thoughts, Barnes,” Clint says, with a groan.

“—And if we’re still here when S.H.I.E.L.D. officially shows up, which I bet they will—”

“They’re about six minutes out,” Natasha says, tapping her comm. She’s wearing that carefully controlled _I will continue to do my job and not give in to the surrounding madness_ expression she gets sometimes.

“—Then we’re all gonna be doing paperwork on this for the next six weeks. Stevie, is there anything we need to know about, y’know,” he scans his eyes up and down Steve’s body, “this new thing before we get on the plane?”

“No, it’s fine, I can regulate it,” Steve says, and Bucky stops, and looks at him sharply. He’s probably imagining it, but there’s something a little off about Steve’s tone.

“So this is what Extremis really does, huh?” he says, keeping his own voice neutral.

“Seems that way.”

Bucky makes sure he doesn't break stride or change expression while he says, “How much do we know about how this stuff works?”

“You know I’m not a scientist, Buck. But I’ll have Bruce check me out when we get back, and he can explain it to us both in small w—”

Steve stops, and his grip on Bucky’s arm tightens, and Bucky’s stomach feels like it’s diving straight for the center of the earth, even before Steve raises his hand to press it against his chest. “Sam,” Bucky says, voice strained, “I think we're gonna need you to come do your medic thing over here.”

“Huh?” Steve shakes his head. “No, Bucky, I’m okay, I just felt a little weird for a sec—” and this time he actually stumbles, and Bucky knows, even before he sees Steve’s eyes rolling back and reaches out to grab him as he pitches forward, that the nightmare isn’t over at all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The queen of cliffhangers strikes again! Muahahahaha (seriously please don't hate me).


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, lovelies, [I commissioned an art for this series!](http://wingedcorgi.tumblr.com/post/147961155976/bring-back-the-tiny-steve-a-stucky-commission-for) Happy (very early) birthday to me, and go check out Maya’s blog, she’s great. ♥

When Steve wakes up, the first thing he sees is Bucky, sitting on a hospital bed that’s been pushed up next to his. He’s clean-shaven and his hair is drawn back in a neat ponytail; his knees are pulled up to his chest, and he’s reading a fat paperback novel from that series where people are always getting stabbed and dying horribly. There’s a plastic hospital ID bracelet on his wrist and a pulse-oxygen monitor clipped over his right index finger, but it’s probably just a precaution, because he looks good. _Really_ good. There are shadows under his eyes, and the faint worry line across his forehead might be a little more prominent, but he’s very much alive, and that’s all that matters to Steve right now.

“Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” he murmurs, and Bucky turns, puts the book down, and gives him a slow, warm smile.

“How do you feel?” he asks.

“Tired,” Steve says, truthfully. “You?”

“Same. You know, we gotta quit doing this almost-dying stuff. It’s exhausting.” Bucky reaches across the bed and curls his metal fingers around Steve’s right hand, which is just about the only part of him that isn’t hooked up to a complicated assortment of medical devices. “You know that feeling when you should be furious with somebody but you’re really just so goddamn happy to see them?”

“You mean like when you think your boyfriend’s dead but it turns out he just jaunted off to Asgard for the weekend?”

He means it as a joke, but Bucky’s face falls. “Steve, I’m so sorry. I never meant for you to think I was dead. If I’d had any choice at all, I would’ve—”

“Bucky, stop it. You know damn well I’m the one who needs to apologize. I made a huge mistake because I wanted to hit back at the people who hurt you. By the time I realized that AIM was just as bad in their own way, it was almost too late. I did exactly what I promised you I wouldn’t do, and I don’t know how I can ask you to forgive me for that.”

Bucky looks at him solemnly for a moment, then gives a little huff of irritation. “Honestly, Steve, you’re such a jackass sometimes. ‘Ohhh, Bucky, I’m sorry I love you so much that I lost my mind when I thought you were dead.’ How am I supposed to stay mad at you for that?”

“I didn’t say it like that,” Steve says, with a soft laugh that’s mostly relief.

“You didn’t have to. I don’t know that I’m really worth burning the world down for, but I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t flattering. Besides, I went into this relationship knowing you had a history of doing dumb shit when the people you love are in trouble.”

Steve doesn’t deny it. “About that. You never did tell me what happened. I mean, I know Tony’s house got blown up, but how did Thor get in to rescue you without anyone noticing?”

“Believe it or not, I didn’t get hurt in the house. I got thrown clear, fell in the ocean. Washed up on the beach maybe half a klick south, where none of the cameras were pointed. As for why Thor had to come rescue my ass…” Bucky grimaces. “The Mandarin sent a professional to eliminate anybody who survived the attack on the house. Whoever it was, they, uh, shot me.”

“Somebody _shot_ you? Where?”

Bucky hesitates, then hikes up the scrub top to show Steve a square of gauze taped two inches below his right nipple.

Well, that certainly explains the hospital bracelet; now the question is why Bucky isn’t hooked up to as many machines as Steve. “Jesus, Buck. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“Yeah.” A flash of guilt crosses Bucky’s face. “Got something to tell you about that later. Nothing bad, just… I have a lot of feelings about it, you know? And I’ve got some more urgent stuff to catch you up on right now, if you’re up to it.” Steve nods, and Bucky continues, “The first thing is… There’s no easy way to say it, so: Aldrich Killian turned out to be the Mandarin.”

Steve stares at him. “No,” he says. “I met Killian. He wasn’t—”

“He wasn’t the guy from the videos, no. Turns out that guy was an actor, but Killian was the one pulling the strings. Had this whole scheme that went all the way up to the Vice President. Tony figured out what he was up to and stopped him, but along the way, Pepper got grabbed by AIM and injected with Extremis. She’s fine, though. She got the, uh, fire powers, same as you, but not the surprise fainting thing.”

“Thank God she's okay,” Steve says. “And yeah, I’m sorry that was so dramatic. I think I just overdid it. I’m kind of beat, but otherwise I feel fine.”

A shadow crosses Bucky’s face. “Steve. You didn’t just pass out for a couple hours. Your body was doing such a full-scale freakout that the doctors put you under deep sedation to bring everything back to baseline. You’ve been out for days.”

_“What?”_

“I know, I’m sorry. I knew you’d hate losing time again after, y’know, the ice, but it was the best way to keep you stable until they figured out what was going on. Tony and Bruce have been working on it around the clock, and they figured it out this morning.” He leans over and plants a quick kiss on Steve’s mouth. “We’re both gonna be home in plenty of time for Christmas,” he adds, and then, when Steve’s eyes start to fill up, he says, “Hey, no, Stevie, don’t do that. I’m sorry, whatever I did, I’ll fix it—”

“You didn’t do anything wrong, Buck.” Steve rubs his eyes hard. A few days ago, Bucky was dead and he was ready to go off on a suicide mission, and now Bucky’s right here, talking like he’s never been gone. Talking about Christmas. “I’ve lost a lot of people. You’re the only one who’s ever come back.”

Bucky’s expression softens. “Hey, what’d I tell you, punk? I’m with you to the end of the line. In fact, I, uh…” He’s fidgeting with something in the pocket of the scrub pants. “I had kind of a crazy idea, I was gonna wait a while to ask, but I thought maybe, if you wanted, we could—”

“—Just _saying,_ if a man’s baring his soul to you, you could drink a cup of coffee, maybe take a stretch break,” Tony says, throwing open the door and striding into the hospital room. Bruce trails behind him, wearing the long-suffering expression that means Tony has been holding forth on the current topic for a while now. Steve can’t help staring at him—it’s not the same as having Bucky back, but until now, Tony’s resurrection has been an abstract concept. Feeling Steve’s eyes on him, he turns and says, “Nice to see you awake, Dustfinger. I’ve heard of fiery Irish tempers before, but they don’t usually mean it so literally.”

“Going obscure in the nickname department,” Bucky says approvingly. “Nice.”

Tony smirks. “Glad you like it, Buccaneer.”

“Aw, no,” says Bucky.

“What’s wrong with that one?” Steve asks. “Unless, wait, is it about the hooks-for-hands thing? Because that’s not okay, Tony.”

“No,” Bucky says, resigned, “it’s because I kind of made a pirate joke at Thor’s dad. Because he’s got an eyepatch. But in my defense, I was heavily medicated at the time.”

“I’m officially in awe of how much of a walking disaster you are, Barnes. And considering how much time I’ve spent with Clint this year, that’s saying something.” Steve turns his head toward Tony. “I hear you have a lock on why I passed out.”

“Right down to business, huh? I was hoping for a little more ‘oh, Tony, thank God you’re alive,’ but—”

“Would you really rather talk about how you almost got Bucky killed?” Steve says, and oh, there it is, the heat flaring up under his skin.

Bucky takes a sharp breath, but Tony raises his hands in surrender. “I fucked up, Rogers,” he says, and Steve blinks. He wasn’t expecting that. “It hasn’t escaped me that I’ve made mistakes on an epic scale. I’m not the best at apologies, but if it’s any consolation to you, there was a space in there where I thought Pepper was dead, and I got to live through exactly what you did, with the bonus of knowing it was a hundred percent my fault. So believe me when I say that none of us got off scot-free.”

“I didn’t get to tell you about the Iron Man suits,” Bucky adds, quietly, to Steve.

“The suits?”

“He blew them all up.”

“What?” Steve stares at Tony. “Was this on purpose? All that tech and you just wasted it? What does that mean—are you off the team? What if S.H.I.E.L.D. sends us out before we can replace you?” This is going to be the ultimate hypocrisy, but Steve doesn’t care: “That was _selfish,_ Tony.”

“Tony obviously has a lot to think about, and some decisions to make,” Bruce interjects, and Tony, who actually does look fairly chastened for once, shoots him a grateful look. “But right now, our priority is getting you healthy again.”

“I don’t see what the problem is,” Steve says. “Other than being exhausted, I feel great.”

“That is the problem,” Bruce says, and his tone is grim enough that Bucky slides his left arm around Steve, as if the metal can shield him from the words. “We’ve figured out how Extremis works, and it’s not exactly as Killian advertised. It does more or less what he promised in his sales pitch—it affects the parts of the brain that govern healing and cellular regeneration—only it’s not quite as simple as ‘brain sends more chemicals to body, body heals faster.’”

“There’s a reason your body doesn’t already just flood itself with cytokines every time there’s a problem,” Tony concurs. “Think of your body as a car with a speed governor. Rip that off and sure, you can go three hundred miles an hour, but you’ll burn up the engine doing it. Not to mention the increased potential for crashing and dying.”

“When you had the serum,” Bruce says, “it amped up your metabolism to about four times faster than normal, but it compensated for the additional energy requirements by taking in oxygen and nutrients faster and processing them more efficiently. It took a lot more calories to run that body, but everything stayed in balance.”

“Whereas Extremis doesn’t really cure what ails you,” says Tony. “It just overloads whatever system is malfunctioning. Asthma’s a problem? Extremis pumps you full of adrenaline to open your airways, same as an inhaler—only it doesn’t give you a metered dose, it gives you a flood. Heart’s arrhythmic? Extremis regulates the electrical charge like a metronome—but when your heart rate goes up, it stays up. Scoliosis? Extremis contracts the muscles around your spine to pull it straight, but those muscles are constantly overworked and churning out lactic acid. You see where I’m going with this.”

“Keeping with the car metaphor,” Bruce says, “you’re not just tired, you’re running on empty. And on top of that, producing hundreds of degrees of heat—it’s scientifically remarkable, but your energy reserves were depleted on a cellular level.”

“But Killian, and the others in the program,” Steve says, “none of them seemed to be having these problems.”

“Someone with no digestive issues might be able to get by if they drank their weight in protein shakes every time they superheated,” Bruce says. “But you’ve got pernicious anemia, which means you have trouble absorbing nutrients even under normal conditions. In the short term, we’re compensating by giving you a super-concentrated nutrient mixture through the IV. As for Killian, there’s a reason he was desperate to get Tony’s help with stabilizing the Extremis formula. He was able to sustain it for a while, but the long-term effects were destroying his endocrine system. We were able to access some of his research logs from AIM’s remote servers, and by his own estimate, if he couldn’t find a way to stabilize Extremis, he would have been dead within a year.”

Bucky has been getting more and more agitated during Bruce’s explanation; his breathing is fast and shallow, and the plates in the arm are rattling. “But you have a solution,” he says. “You can put a regulator on Extremis, right? You said you could fix it and Steve would be fine.”

“We have two potential solutions.” Tony has the expression of someone who’s taking one for the team when he says, “Choice number one: we spend the next couple of months tinkering with Extremis, turn it down a little at a time until we get to something that works as intended—increased healing with minimal side effects. Choice number two: we fix Extremis by neutralizing it.”

“Which means your health problems come back,” Bruce adds, unnecessarily.

“Versus staying relatively symptom-free—and keeping the fire stuff, let’s not forget the fire stuff, which is objectively awesome—but, full disclosure, as long as Extremis is active in your body, you’re still looking at a significant health risk,” says Tony.

“This from a guy who tests his Iron Man suits by flying them into the stratosphere,” Steve says, but the smile dies on his lips when he sees Bruce’s expression.

“I know it’s hard to tell with Tony, but this is serious, Steve. If you keep the Extremis formula, you’ll have to be _very_ careful about how you use it. That includes constant monitoring to make sure it’s not pushing you towards another collapse. Beyond that, you should be able to handle an occasional use of the superheating, but if you overdo it, landing back in the hospital will be the least of your concerns. You’ve seen the Mandarin’s videos. Those explosions weren’t bombs. They were Extremis misfires.” He lets that sink in for a minute before he continues, “We think we can stabilize the formula enough that it won’t be dangerous under most circumstances, but carry the superheating too far and, well…”

“I think the word you’re looking for is ‘boom,’” Tony finishes.

For a minute, nobody says anything. Then, without looking at anybody, Bucky gets up, unclips himself from the monitor, and walks out of the room. Steve says, “Bucky, wait,” and starts to push himself up from the mattress, but he already knows it won’t do any good. He knows the look on Bucky’s face: he’s hit the limits of what he can handle and, rather than give in to the impending panic attack in front of everybody, he’s going off to find a quiet place where he won’t bother anyone while he quietly loses his mind for the next half hour. When you’re Captain America, one of the key tenets of the job is not letting anybody see you bleed.

“I’ll make sure he’s okay,” Bruce says, getting up to follow Bucky out.

“Yeah, try not to fall asleep, Not-That-Kind-of-Doctor,” Tony calls after him.

 _“One_ time,” Bruce grouses, heading out into the hallway.

“So,” Steve says, after the door swings shut, leaving him alone with Tony, “I guess this is where I get the lecture, huh?”

Tony laughs a little and shakes his head. “You want to know what I think?” he says. “I think the worst thing you could do is let Barnes make this decision for you.”

Steve blinks. That wasn’t where he was expecting this to go.

“I don’t have to tell you that from a medical perspective, the smart move is to neutralize Extremis,” Tony says. “Bruce and I both know what it is to live with a time bomb in your chest. Thinking about getting mine fixed, actually. But, and this is the key point, it’s my decision. Not Pepper’s, not Bruce’s, not some committee’s. Now, I think I know you reasonably well at this point—”

“Just say we’re friends, Tony. It’s okay, I won’t tell anyone.”

Tony blinks, looks like he’s considering a snarky response, and then, unexpectedly, he smiles. “Honesty was never my dad’s strong suit,” he says. “Growing up, I took his Cap-and-Peggy stories with a grain of salt. But you were the one thing I should’ve believed him about. The guy he fangirled over and the guy I’ve gotten to know over the last year, they have one big thing in common. You didn’t sign on for Project Rebirth because you wanted health and safety, and you don’t stick with the Avengers because it’s a barrel of laughs. I started doing the Iron Man thing because of guilt. But you…” He taps the arc reactor in his chest, indicating his heart. “It’s inborn, the wanting-to-help thing. You can’t _not._ Burning down that AIM lab, okay, mildly apocalyptic, but I can tell you that you made the world safer by doing it. Some of the research we got off their remote servers afterward was pretty horrifying. Officially, S.H.I.E.L.D. is sweeping the whole business under the rug and you and I are both on disciplinary leave. Unofficially, I think Fury’s doing a little happy dance about the fact that we each took out a major security threat this week without his having to defy the World Security Council.”

“That’s an image,” Steve says dryly.

“My point is, medically speaking, there’s one right answer. Psychologically… morally, if I may use that word… there may be a different one. The Hulk does a lot of harm, but he’s a hell of a weapon in the right hands. If we can bring Extremis down to the point where it’s not a danger to you, you could be the same. If you decide it’s too much, fine. But make the call because it’s you want, not because Barnes gives you puppydog eyes.”

“You’re telling me,” Steve says, “that it’s okay to be selfish.”

“Well.” Tony gives him a shrug and a half-smile. “Didn’t say I was a billionaire genius playboy _saint.”_

Steve takes a deep breath. How long has it been since he could take a deep breath with no tightness in his chest, and let it all the way out without wheezing? “I…” he says, hesitates for a long moment, and then says, “I’m not sure what I want is that simple, Tony.”

Tony tilts his head to the side, silently inviting him to go on.

“I always said I didn’t want to be a superhero,” Steve says. “These last few days have made me wonder how long I’ve been lying to myself about that. Maybe I’ve always been a little addicted to the idea of being the hero, or at least being a martyr. Bucky called me on it not long ago, actually—told me I say I want to help people when I’m really thinking about my own damn pride. But for all he knows me better than anybody, I don’t think he really gets it that there was a time when half the world was telling me I should just lay down and die already, and the other half was telling me I wasn’t even good enough to be cannon fodder. I had nothing _but_ my own damn pride. So you’re right; part the reason I’m in the hero business is because I want to do the right thing. Call that goodness or arrogance or good old Catholic guilt, it doesn’t matter, it’s part of me. But maybe it’s also true that I’ve been desperate to get some form of the super-serum back because I don’t know who I am without it. And don’t get me wrong, I’m so grateful that Bucky came along and saw something in me that was worth loving—not Captain America, but me, the guy nobody ever looked at twice. I’m unbelievably lucky to have him—”

“But external validation will only get you so far if you’re not happy with yourself? Yeah, I get that. What?” Tony says, in response to Steve’s look. “You knew my dad. You really think I’ve never been to therapy?”

Steve manages a smile, but he knows it’s thin and unconvincing. “I want Bucky and me to be equal partners. I’m sick of being the one who has to be taken care of. And yeah, given the chance, he would try to talk me into giving up Extremis. And if I gave in, then I’d feel resentful, and he’d feel guilty, and nobody would win. But that’s not why I’m going to do it.”

“Steve, buddy,” Tony says, “you don’t have to make a snap decision here. We’ve got maybe forty-eight hours before we have to take action. You can think it over, sleep on it—”

“I don’t need to,” Steve says. “Tony, if I keep Extremis, then sure, I’ll definitely always use it responsibly. Until Bucky’s in trouble. Or you are, or Natasha, or one of the others. Or until there’s a supervillain, or a warlord, or a bully who’s just begging to be taken down.”

“Steve—”

“When I was in the AIM lab, I realized this is too much power for any one group—or one person—to control,” Steve says, in the tone that means he’s not going to bend on this. “Bruce is living with the Hulk because he has to. He literally has no other choice. So he spends every day knowing he’s a bomb that could go off at any second. That no matter how many precautions we put in place, he could hurt somebody he cares about. I don’t want to be a danger to the people around me, and I don’t trust myself to have that much power and not abuse it. This is final, Tony. I’ve made my call.”

Tony stares at him intently for several seconds, eyebrows drawn together, frowning. Then he sighs and says, “You know, Bruce and I… we get along great, but outside of the science, we don’t actually _agree_ all that often. But we both figured this decision should be completely up to you, so I won’t try to talk you out of it.”

“Thanks, Tony.”

 _“Even though_ I had about three hundred good nicknames lined up that’ll just go to waste now.”

“Your personal sacrifice is appreciated.”

“I mean, the possibilities if we had somebody on the team whose call sign was Balrog—”

“Tony,” Steve says. “I’m pretty tired. Is your… cure… ready to go?”

“Yeah. Bruce prepped a couple doses of each option while we waited for you to wake up. Pepper had hers a few hours ago. She was in pretty good shape to start with, so using Extremis didn’t take the same toll on her as it did on you. She’s back at the Tower, recovering.”

“Give it to me, and then go home and be with her. She needs you more than I do.”

“Are you s—never mind,” Tony says, “dumb question. Of course you’re sure. Okay. I’ll get the stuff and we’ll get started.”

By the time Bucky comes back to the room, looking pale and drawn but more or less composed again, Tony has already been and gone. Steve guesses it must be clear from his expression that something has happened, because Bucky says, “What…” and then, “You decided, didn’t you?”

“It’s not only decided, it's done.” Steve forces a smile. “No more Extremis.”

“Because I freaked out,” Bucky says, miserably.

Thank God, Steve can say, in good conscience, “No. Because I don’t trust myself with this much power. Believe me, Buck, I’m doing this because it’s the right thing.”

After a moment of startled silence, Bucky says, “Okay, move over,” and climbs into the bed beside Steve. It takes some maneuvering, and a lot of caution to avoid pulling on any of the wires or IV lines, but eventually things are arranged so they're both lying down with Steve’s back against his chest. It’s a tight fit, but Steve isn’t very big, after all.

“I don’t think the nursing staff is going to approve of this,” Steve observes.

“I’m Captain America and I got shot in the line of duty. They’ll give me a pass.” Bucky tightens his arms around Steve. “So what happens now?”

“Tony says the stuff he and Bruce cooked up will make Extremis flush itself out of my system. My temperature will probably fluctuate for a while and I’ll feel like I have the flu for a couple of days, and then that’ll be that.”

“Okay.” Bucky is quiet for a while. Then, suddenly, he says, “This isn’t what I wanted, Steve.”

“Me neither.”

“I mean… I was scared to death about the idea of you _getting_ Extremis. But once you had it, I thought you could finally be happy.”

“Don’t worry about it, Buck. I swear, I’m through trying to be a superhero. I won’t put either of us through this again.”

Bucky tenses. “Steve, about, uh, about the super-soldier serum—”

“Please, Buck. Don’t. It’s over.”

“Okay,” Bucky says again. If it’s possible, he sounds even more unhappy now.

“Hey,” Steve says, to distract him, “what were you going to ask me about before Tony came in?”

“Oh. Oh, that. Wow, this would be a really bad time to talk about that.”

“You sure? I mean, you’ve had a rough couple of days too. If there’s something—”

“Trust me, it’ll keep,” Bucky says, too quickly. And then, “Steve, you know we’re gonna get through this together, right?”

“Yeah, I got that,” Steve says, and then they’re both quiet, waiting to see what happens next.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don’t worry, guys, it’s always darkest before dawn, and things will be looking up for the guys a LOT in the next chapter, I promise.
> 
> On an unrelated note, I’ve committed some terrible abuses of science in this chapter, but honestly, Marvel started it. I get lightheaded if lunch is half an hour late, but all these people are running around melting steel girders and none of them stops to eat a Snickers bar? Seriously? It took me weeks to figure out something even halfway logical to explain all of this.
> 
> I stole “Buccaneer” from [this fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/6683983/chapters/15286039) by imafriendlydalek and orbingarrow, because it was such a lovely fit for this scene.


	16. Chapter 16

“Can I talk to you for a minute?”

Steve looks up from the book he’s been pretending to read for the last half hour. Becca Barnes-Proctor is standing in the living room doorway. It hasn’t escaped him that Bucky keeps quietly arranging for at least one person to stay behind at the apartment every time he goes out, in case Steve needs anything, but he’s glad it’s Becca this time and not one of the other Barnes girls. It means there’s one less lie to keep track of.

All three of the Barnes sisters know that Bucky is Captain America now, but Becca is the only one who knows about Extremis. Bucky claimed he told her for medical reasons—that as long as they have a doctor staying at their apartment, it’s dumb not to have her monitor Steve’s recovery—but Steve is pretty sure he just needed someone to emote to about the situation. Liz and Meg, on the other hand, both think Steve’s recent hospital stay was related to his asthma. Steve probably wasn’t supposed to overhear the part where Bucky hinted that he was mostly just stressed and run-down from grieving Bucky’s alleged death, and told the girls to give him some space. He appreciates it, though. They’re sweet girls, but Bucky is right: their relentless cheeriness can be overwhelming at the best of times.

Honestly, Steve doesn’t want a forced cheering-up session from Becca, either. What he really wants to do is go back to bed. In fact, all he’s wanted to do since he got out of the hospital is sleep. When he’s sleeping, he doesn’t have to feel Bucky’s eyes constantly turning toward him while he tries to follow his own advice about backing off; doesn’t have to feel like such a disappointment to everyone, himself most of all; doesn’t have to _feel,_ period. But he can’t think of a polite way to say no to Becca—particularly not when he remembers that she spent nearly as long as Steve did thinking Bucky was dead, not to mention that she had to break the news to the rest of them that Bucky had been Captain America all along. So, rather than making excuses, he draws his knees up to make room for her beside the nest of blankets that Bucky made up for him on the couch. “So Jason and Emily seem pretty excited for Christmas,” he says.

“They’re good kids,” Becca agrees. “I’m lucky that Alex and I have the means to spoil them a little at the holidays. It wasn’t always something my parents could do when we were young. Dad did all right with his Army job, but having four kids in nine years had to be tough, even before Meg went through all her health problems. Sometimes I really wonder how Mom managed to hold it all together.”

“I wonder the same thing about my mom sometimes,” Steve admits.

“You know, it was right before Christmas when we lost Dad,” Becca goes on. She and Bucky share a lot of mannerisms; this is the first time Steve has noticed that they both have the same sad smile. “That year was tough on everybody. Between Meg being in and out of the hospital, and Bucky coming out—which, obviously, _now_ I’m glad he did, but it definitely took some getting used to—anyhow, I remember thinking, well, at least this year can’t possibly get any harder. And then, all of a sudden, Dad was gone.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says. “It must have been awful.”

 “It was,” she says. “And everyone always says, _oh, it must have made it so much worse that it happened right at the holidays._ But, you know, it was funny: Mom completely threw herself into Christmas that year. Decorations, presents, carols, a huge turkey and more cookies than we could possibly eat. I thought she was in shock, or denial, or maybe just trying to keep herself so busy that she couldn’t think about it, but it wasn’t that at all. Mom _loved_ doing all that stuff. Years later, she told me that losing Dad was devastating, but she made a decision that she wasn’t going to lose everything else she cared about, too. No matter how much of a toll it took on her, she was determined that she wasn’t going to let it take Christmas.”

“Your mother sounds like an incredible woman.”

“She was. I miss her all the time, but now, doing a big Christmas celebration every year makes me feel close to her. And she taught me probably the most important lesson I ever learned, which is: you don’t have to pretend you’re not struggling, but don’t let it steal everything good from your life.” She takes his hands and squeezes them. “Don’t let it take Christmas.”

Steve is trying to figure out how to respond when the elevator dings out in the entryway, and a minute later, the extended Barnes clan piles into the living room—Jason and Emily squealing incoherently about something that happened on their outing, Liz and Meg both laughing so hard that they’re not earning many more points in the intelligibility department, and Bucky behind them, wearing a little grin that probably means most of that laughter is his doing. He must have really let the kids trounce him in their snowball fight, because his coat is soaked, and he’s lost the mitten off his metal hand. He looks up, sees Steve watching him—and his smile doesn’t fade, exactly, but it shifts into more of a questioning look.

For a few seconds they stare at each other, and then Steve says, “Hey, jerk.”

About three days’ worth of tension leaves Bucky’s shoulders all at once. “Hey, punk,” he says, crossing to the couch and leaning down for a kiss. His lips are cold. “How are you?”

“Not too bad,” Steve says. “Could you do me a favor? Get my sketchpad out of the studio, and the box of drawing pencils, I think they’re on the windowsill?” When Bucky stares at him, he says, “What?”

“I’m just trying to remember if you’ve ever actually asked me for help before.”

Steve shrugs. “I want to draw you the way you look right now, and I’m too comfortable to get up. You made me a nice little bed here, I want to stay in it.”

“Becca,” Bucky says, “who’s this guy and how did you bodyswap him with my boyfriend?”

“Hey, you’re always telling me I should let you be nice to me. Don’t ruin the moment.”

“Steve,” Bucky says, voice low and serious, “what are you doing?”

“Appreciating what I’ve got,” Steve says. “Or I would be, if some jerk would stop arguing with me and go get me my sketchpad.”

Bucky blinks a few times, but he clearly doesn’t want to question the miracle too closely. He puts the sketchpad in Steve’s hands, and Steve traces his eyes over Bucky’s face, memorizing the pink flush high up on his cheekbones, the curve of his smile, the epic windblown disaster of his hair. Then he puts the pencil to the page and starts roughing out proportions.

It’s not as if anything is solved, really. He’s still achingly sad when he thinks about how close he came and how badly he failed with Extremis. It’s going to take more than one good night—in fact, it’s probably going to take a lot of hard fucking work, and possibly a truckload of therapy—before he can let go of all that. But it’s a step in the right direction. Maybe it’s going to be a long road back to normal for both of them, but this is a good place to start.

 

Bucky isn’t in bed when Steve wakes up, but almost before he opens his eyes, Jarvis says, “Good morning, sir. Captain Barnes has requested the pleasure of your company in the kitchen. And may I be the first to wish you a merry Christmas?”

“Aw, thanks, buddy,” Steve says—not just for the greeting, but for sparing him that moment of irrational panic he sometimes gets when he first wakes, wondering if he’s dreamed Bucky’s whole miraculous resurrection. “Same to you. Oh—unless there’s a different holiday you celebrate. I guess I shouldn’t assume you prefer one over another.”

There’s a short pause, and then Jarvis, sounding amused, replies, “Actually, sir, the birthdays of Charles Babbage and Ada Lovelace both fall in December. Perhaps I should establish a new seasonal celebration.”

“Well, don’t tell Tony if you do. He’ll probably try to get the day of your creator’s birth set up as a religious observance.”

“What makes you think he hasn’t tried, sir?” Jarvis says, and Steve grins as he pulls on his bathrobe and heads out to the kitchen.

Bucky is standing at the stove, with a cup of coffee in one hand, frying up enough assorted breakfast meats to feed a regiment. Maybe he can’t cook anything complicated worth a damn—there’s still a visible dent in the ceiling from the pressure cooker incident—but he’s pretty good at breakfast. “What’s all this?” Steve asks, taking a seat at the table.

“Barnes family tradition. We always do a big family meal on Christmas morning before we rip into the presents.”

“Isn’t that hard on the kids?”

“Sure, but it’s a hell of a lot easier on the adults if the screaming doesn’t kick into high gear until after coffee. Here.” He sets a plate with a waffle on it in front of Steve. "I tried a different batter this time, so you get to taste this and tell me if it’s any good.”

“Thanks,” Steve says. He’s about to get up when he remembers his new resolve to let Bucky help, since it obviously makes him so happy, and says, “Could you pass the whipped cream?”

Bucky raises an eyebrow. “You’re gonna have to come get it.”

“Hey, I thought you said—” Steve is beginning to protest, when Bucky picks up the canister on the counter and squirts a generous dollop of whipped cream into his open mouth.

If Bruce hadn’t done the bloodwork already to verify that there’s no trace of Extremis left in his system, Steve would think he was about to set the kitchen on fire from the heat rushing to his face. Does Bucky have any idea how suggestive that—oh. Right. “You’re a filthy animal, Barnes.”

“You love it,” Bucky says, with his mouth full.

“I love _you._ I find your sense of humor a little questionable. Get down here.”

He’s making a pretty good effort at collecting on the whipped cream when a faint _ding_ comes over the kitchen speakers, Jarvis announcing his presence. “I’m terribly sorry to disturb you, sirs, but Mr. Stark is on his way to your floor.”

“You’re fucking kidding me,” Bucky grumbles. “That guy has the worst timing. Jarvis, would you tell him to piss off?”

“I’m afraid that sentiment would neither please me to convey nor ultimately dissuade Sir from his visit, Captain.”

“So you _don’t_ give a shit about the Second Law of Robotics. Good to know.” Bucky sighs, turns off the stove, and catches Steve’s hand in his before heading out to the living room.

“Merry Christmas, boys and girls,” Tony says grandly, when he throws the door open a few seconds later. “Sorry-not-sorry to crash your morning, but Sandy Claws is here with a sack full of toys.”

“I thought you were still in Malibu with Pepper,” says Steve.

“We were feeling a little over California, so we flew back as soon as we wrapped up the last of the business with the house. Speaking of which, bring ’em in, kiddo,” he calls, and a medium-sized robot rolls forward, dragging a cart behind it. There’s a crate on the cart, the kind fine art gets moved in, and a smaller, rounded shape under a tarp.

“Hey, you fished Dum-E up out of the ocean,” Bucky says, clearly pleased. “See that, little fella? Your daddy does love you.”

“If you tell anyone else that, I will end you, Barnes,” Tony says, grabbing one end of the crate. “Here, give me a hand with Rogers’ Christmas surprise.”

“I thought Pepper said to quit with the crazy elaborate presents, Tones,” Bucky says, although he still helps him lift it down and, when Tony hands him a crowbar, starts prying up the front panel.

“This one was Pepper’s idea. Thing is,” he says, turning to Steve, “Barnes had a pretty fantastic present lined up for you, but it went in the ocean with most of my house, so Pepper suggested we get you something nice to compensate.”

“Aw, I like it,” Bucky says, when he lifts the lid. “I mean, I’m sure I’m completely missing the point of it because I know shit about art, but it’s really neat.”

 _“Neat?”_ Steve repeats, in blatant disbelief. He’s staring at the painting. The top half is a sunny blue sky full of puffy clouds down to a treeline; under the trees it’s night, a quiet street lit by lamps that reflect in a canal. The longer he looks at it, the more tricks it plays on his sense of depth and distance, and the more that happens, the more he can’t stop looking. He’s never seen this brushwork in person before, but—“Tony, is this a fucking _Magritte?”_

“Ooh, Barnes, you were right. Making him swear _is_ fun,” says Tony. “No, seriously, it’s a complete white elephant gift. I have so many paintings taking up space in deep storage. Don’t look at me like that, most of them end up in museums sooner or later, usually because Pepper looks at me like that. This one probably should too, eventually, but we thought you might like to hang onto it for a few decades first.”

“Tony, we can’t just hang an original Magritte on the wall of our apartment,” Steve says. “That’s not a thing people do.”

“It’s a thing rich people do, and you are one, so it’s high time for you to start acting obnoxiously entitled like the rest of us, pal. Do you like it?”

“I love it, but it’s too _much.”_

“It’s not nearly enough to make up for what I put the two of you through,” Tony says, abruptly serious. “But maybe this is.” He sweeps the tarp aside, revealing a familiar flash of red, white, and blue.

If Steve was shocked by the gift of the painting, Bucky is thunderstruck by the return of the shield. “How?” he demands, once he’s finished being speechless.

“Well, you know I borrowed Rhodey’s suit to salvage the robots, right? When I was on the seafloor, I picked up a blip on the environmental scanner. Did you know vibranium shows up as negative space on sonar? Makes sense, no vibrations, no ping. Oh. Oh, Barnes is a hugger now. Rogers, make him stop. Seriously, this is freaking me out, a little help here, oh, God, Jarvis, how fast can you get someone up from Security—”

“Tony,” Bucky says, laughing and stepping back. “Thank you.”

“I’m just glad you’re okay, Barnes. Both of you. You are okay, right? With the—”

“With the hole in my liver and Steve’s second experiment in reckless genetic manipulation? Yeah, we’re good. Hey,” Bucky says, “do you want to stay for breakfast? My niece and nephew will be awake any minute, and I think they’d both be pretty excited to meet Iron Man.”

“Not _as_ excited as if you were The Amazing Hawkeye,” Steve can’t resist adding.

“Well, obviously,” Bucky agrees.“I mean, flying through outer space is all very well and good but Hawkeye has a _dog.”_

“Hm. Your cozy little domestic scene sounds suspiciously like my personal hell. Besides, I’ve got other people to annoy this morning. But you two enjoy the shrieking younglings. Come on, Dum-E. Chop chop.”

“So what was that amazing Christmas present I was supposed to get?” Steve asks lightly, slipping his hand back into Bucky’s as the door swings shut behind Tony.

“What? Oh. Um, I’m not gonna tell you yet.”

Steve smiles. “Do I need to convince you?”

“No, seriously, Steve, it’s—it’s not a good time. Let’s both recover a little before we talk about it, okay?”

“Oh,” Steve says. He’d be lying if he said it didn’t sting, but he really has no right to complain about Bucky wanting a little time to come to grips with the last month, all things considered.

“Besides,” Bucky tells him, “I already set up kind of a different surprise for you. It’s gonna take a couple days to get here, but I think it’s something you’ll really like.”

 

It turns out to be a pretty great Christmas.

 

It’s funny, but Steve has never really experienced post-holiday letdown before. He knows it’s a thing, but while Christmas was always good when it was just him and his mother, it wasn’t, well, it wasn’t this _much:_ a house full of family, warmth and light and laughter and presents and food—God, so much food that he feels a little guilty thinking about it, even though Bucky keeps shoving leftovers at him and reminding him, none too gently, that he was already underweight before Extremis. But now Alex and Becca have taken the kids home to Ewing, and Meg has flown to Chicago with Liz for a little sister time before she heads off to her next semester, and the Tower feels empty without them. It doesn’t help that Clint is in Iowa with Laura, and Sam and Natasha are visiting Sam’s grandmother in Virginia—the two of them are getting along well enough to shock everybody but Sam, apparently—while Bruce has taken off to Dehradun for a couple weeks, probably wisely removing himself from any proximity to holiday stress.

And now Bucky is gone for what promises to be a long day of convincing the American public that Captain America is not, in fact, dead, and that the guy currently carrying the shield is not, in fact, a body double, a clone, or a hyper-realistic robot (all theories Steve has actually heard on the _news,_ not just in the dark underbelly of internet chat, and what the hell is modern journalism coming to?). Bucky bought himself a short reprieve by giving a heavily censored exclusive interview to that awful anchorwoman from Channel One News, but now that Christmas is over, S.H.I.E.L.D. expects him to put in a couple of public appearances. Shaking hands and kissing babies, as they would have said in the Forties. It’s the kind of publicity stunt Tony excels at, but Steve fully expects Bucky to go radio silent until late in the evening, at which point he’ll probably come home drained and grouchy and hating humanity.

Which is why he’s surprised when his phone buzzes shortly before eleven o’clock in the morning with a text reading, **Hey, you still want that Christmas present?**

 **Yes,** Steve replies, although he has no idea what Bucky is cooking up.

**It’s waiting for you in Training Room B. Wear something comfortable.**

Mystified—and sadly unable to squeeze any further information out of Jarvis—Steve slips into a T-shirt and sweatpants and one of Bucky’s hoodies. He owns running shoes, but he’s never worn them—thanks, asthma—so he takes them out of the box and puts them on, too, because what the hell. Then he goes, obediently, to the basement level where the Avengers’ training sessions are held.

He pushes open the door, steps into the room and immediately ducks as somebody’s foot narrowly misses his face.

Steve drops instinctively into a boxing stance, knees bent, weight even, bouncing on the balls of his feet. Before he has time to wonder how any of this is coming back to him so quickly, there’s another attack to dodge. His opponent is an Asian woman no taller than he is, but decidedly more muscular. She comes at him quick and sharp with some kind of martial arts move, striking high with one arm, then low with the other, then whirling and bringing her bare foot up again. Steve dodges the first two moves, doesn’t quite keep her foot from striking his hip and almost knocking him off balance, but he does manage to grab her leg and shove—an inelegant move, but he’s caught off guard and baffled by what’s happening. Before he can try to figure out a way to hit back, though—or even defend himself if this turns out to be an attack by some forgotten enemy, of the kind that S.H.I.E.L.D. is always worrying about—she drops back and looks him up and down quickly, assessing. “Not awful,” she says. “You do have good instincts. Barnes wasn’t completely exaggerating about that.”

“Was this a test?” Steve says, and then, “Who are you?”

“Melinda May, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” she says. “It’s nice to meet you, Steven.”

“If you’re here to recruit me for the latest secret super-soldier program,” Steve says, “then thanks, but no thanks. I think I’ve had about enough of that in my life.”

“I’m not a recruiter,” May says. Her tone is mostly flat, but there’s a hint of guarded amusement in it. She reminds Steve of Natasha. As soon as he realizes that, he likes her immediately. “I’m what S.H.I.E.L.D. calls a specialist, but I sometimes train our new recruits on the side. Your boyfriend asked if I’d be willing to do a little work with you when I’m in New York.” She shrugs. “Can’t say I mind if Captain America owes me a favor.”

“What did he tell you about me?” Steve asks.

“That you’re trained in hand-to-hand and you have a good tactical brain, but you’ve had some medical issues that put you out of commission for a few years, so your skillset will be a little rusty. That you tend to assume you have more mass and longer reach than you do, but that you’re a decent fighter when you remember what weight class you’re in. That you have asthma, so you’ll do best with short bursts of activity, and if you get out of breath, we won’t push it. And that you got a lot of your early combat training from a woman, so I won’t have to break you of nearly as many bad habits as most of my trainees.”

“I’m not interested in going back in the field,” Steve says.  

“I’m not interested in forcing you to. Barnes told me that he had two goals in mind for our sessions. One is to build up your stamina, and the other, in his own words, is to let you work off some frustrations without getting into bar fights.” Her mouth curves in a smile. “I’m on board with both.”

Steve takes as deep a breath as he can. This wasn’t what he was expecting, but… if he’s going to be staying in this body for the long haul, then it really isn’t the worst idea to build it up a little. “Well,” he says, “seeing as you already came all the way out here, I guess it couldn’t hurt to give it a shot.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part of the “don't let it take Christmas” speech in this chapter is straight from _Winter Soldier: Winter Kills._ Bucky said several of those lines in the book (and it was the exact moment I fell in love with comic book Bucky), but I’ve attributed the concept to the Barnes ladies for this fic.
> 
> The painting is Magritte’s _L'Empire des Lumieres,_ because I can't see Steve not loving the Surrealists. 
> 
> “Of course I can’t get frostbite on the metal hand, but it’d look fuckin’ dumb to go around with just one mitten on, Barton,” is a conversation that has absolutely, definitely been had in this universe.


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Let me be clear that I love every one of you readers, but this is a special shout-out to the folks who faithfully comment on multiple chapters to encourage me (and/or yell with me about Bucky and Steve's various shenanigans). I have noticed you and you keep me going, you really do. And I hope you like sap because you are in for a boatload of it.
> 
> Just one more chapter to go!

“Okay,” Steve says, when Bucky picks up the phone, “before I come in, you have to promise me you’re not gonna laugh.”

Bucky perks up immediately. He’s beat, in both senses of the word, after his first Avengers training session since before his gunshot wound, and he’s sprawled on the living room floor, trying to dredge up the energy to fetch himself an icepack and a cup of coffee, but finding out what Steve sounds so nervous about is an even better incentive. “I’m not gonna promise that,” he says. “Especially not if it turns out Tony whammied you with some weird chemical in his lab and you’re about to show up with cat ears or something.”

“It’s definitely not cat ears. Just be nice, okay?” Steve disconnects before Bucky can refuse, and a moment later the door opens and he walks into the apartment, loaded down with half a dozen shopping bags.

Bucky wants to say something smart-assed, he really does, but all he can do is stare. Steve looks _great._ He manages to catch himself before he actually licks his lips, and says, “Did Natasha take you shopping? Was that her big secret mission this week?”

“It was Pepper, actually,” Steve says, which makes sense. Natasha’s taste is a little more flashy, but Pepper leans toward high-quality, timeless pieces that will last, which is much more in line with Steve’s Depression-era thinking. The fact that he’s put on a nice sweater and slacks isn’t what’s making Bucky lose his higher brain functions, though; it’s the fact that he’s wearing things that are actually tailored, instead of too big and hanging loose on his small frame. He’s probably feeling self-conscious about how tightly the new clothes fit at his narrow shoulders and hips, having no idea of what that little bit of cling is doing to Bucky’s limbic system right now.

“Remind me to send Pepper some flowers,” he says, reverently. “C’mere, let me get a closer look at y—aagh!” As soon as he reaches up, Steve grabs his wrists and pins his arms over his head, shamelessly swinging one leg over to straddle him. Sure, with a metal arm, he could break the hold if he wanted, but where’s the fun in that? “Jeez, May wasn’t supposed to teach you tricks you could use against me.”

“The first thing I asked her to show me was how to pin a guy who’s a lot bigger than me. I didn’t tell her why.” Steve, the little punk, shifts his hips against Bucky’s pelvis and smirks when his breathing gets a little uneven. “Okay, so I guess I don’t look completely stupid.”

Goddammit, he’s left himself wide open and Bucky can’t even come up with a snappy response. “You got a haircut,” he says instead.

“Yeah, Pepper pointed out that as long as I was updating my look, I hadn’t really changed my hair since 1945, so…”

“I like it.” Bucky frees his left hand and reaches up, tapping a metal finger against the wire frame of Steve’s new glasses. Jesus, he’s been planning this big reveal for a while, hasn’t he? “Did she help you pick these, too?”

“No, that was all Karen at the optometrist. I told her I wanted something subtle. I don’t think the hipster look is really for me.”

“They look good. Do they help, though? That’s the important part.”

“Well, today I found out that trees have leaves. Who knew?” Steve deadpans. “Now, come on, say something about the other thing.”

“What other—” Bucky honestly doesn’t know what he’s talking about until Steve deliberately turns his head and shows him. “You got a hearing aid,” he says stupidly, astounded.

“I went to Clint’s audiologist. He’s a good guy. Tried to convince me to go with the licensed Hawkeye model, but I figured Clint would be insufferable, so I got basic silver.”

“Yeah, I see. Come to think of it, though, it wouldn’t be too hard to make that represent your favorite Avenger. It’d only take a little red paint…”

“Yeah, I could paint a teeny tiny arc reactor on there, too, huh?” He laughs when Bucky scowls, and rolls off him, offering him a hand up. “I know it probably seems kind of silly to you that I care how it looks, when you’ve always been so open about your arm—”

“No, I get it. It’s completely valid not to want people up in your face about it all the time. And it’s really not that noticeable. It does seem a little dramatic that you’re rolling all of this out on the same day, though.”

“I was hoping to short-circuit Tony’s brain by making it generate too many new nicknames at once.”

“I got five bucks on ‘Extreme Makeover: Capsicle Edition,’” Bucky says, and Steve smiles before his expression goes somber again.

“Hey, can I talk to you about something else, while we’re at it?”

“Yeah, of course.” Bucky takes a seat on the couch. “Go ahead.”

“I didn’t just see the optometrist and the audiologist. I also went to a psychiatrist. One that May suggested, actually. He’s with S.H.I.E.L.D., but he seems a little more, I don’t know, thoughtful than the others I tried. Less focused on how I can serve the S.H.I.E.L.D. agenda. I’m only one session in, but he’s already given me a lot to think about.”

“That’s—that’s huge,” Bucky says, stunned. “I know you’re not exactly into sharing your feelings, but I think this’ll really be good for you in the long run.”

“Well, wait till you hear the rest before you start singing Dr. Garner’s praises. One of the things we talked about was how maybe I need to find a new job.”

“You’re gonna quit the Avengers?” Bucky says, unable to keep his voice from wavering.

“No, God, no,” Steve says, and Bucky lets out a soft sigh of relief. If Steve wanted that, he’d support him, but it’s hard to imagine going into a fight without Steve to hold the team together. “I’d still run C&C for missions, but it wouldn’t be a full-time thing. Tony and Jarvis could manage some of the training sessions, and you and Sam could take on the recruiting.”

“Really? Me and Sam would be your first choices?”

“Well, Bruce is too quiet, Tony’s too aggressive, Natasha’s too intense, and Clint doesn’t make a great first impression. But Sam is great at winning people over, and you wouldn’t sugarcoat anything. Anyone who joins our team deserves to know exactly what they’re getting into.”

“Okay,” Bucky says, “so if Avenging is your part-time gig, what else did you have in mind? Not that I wouldn’t be thrilled if you wanted to stay home and cook pot roast all day, but I know how you feel about being useful.”

He’s expecting Steve to say he wants to focus on his art, or maybe open a gallery, help struggling young artists connect with wealthy patrons from Tony’s set. He’s completely unprepared when Steve says, “You told me once that you thought I’d make a good paramedic.”

“I did? When?”

“After the Doombots. You were half-asleep, I’m sure you don’t even remember, but it kind of stuck in my head—as something I might be good at and as something the team could use. I know we’ve got Sam and his pararescue training, but I don’t think it would hurt to have some extra medical staff on hand when the Avengers get called out. Especially not with an accident-prone dork like you on the team,” he says, nudging Bucky with his elbow.

“Oh, yeah, like I’m the problem. Steve, I think you could do it, but some of the stuff Sam has told me about the missions he flew… It sounds like an incredibly tough job. You’d have to go into it knowing you couldn’t save everybody.”

“I know,” Steve says. “And I realize I don’t always cope all that well when I can’t. But I don’t think that means it’s not worth trying. Besides, who would you rather have trying to save your life, someone who’s sensible about the odds or a stubborn asshole like me?”

“I’ll take the stubborn asshole any day, but I might be a little biased,” Bucky says, and Steve grins.

“I asked Jarvis for some information on EMT training programs to look over. I’ll have to ask him to fake some credentials for me, probably, since I don’t think I can get away with a 1936 high school diploma. But I might still be able to get into the spring semester. Once I have a little training, I can decide if I want to go on to a full paramedic program.”

“You’ve really thought this through, haven’t you?”

“I do _occasionally_ think before I act, Buck.”

“First time I’ve seen evidence of it. Steve, you know I’m with you no matter what you want to do, right? And if any of the others give you grief about any of it, I’ll kick their asses.”

“I think you mean you can stand there and look menacing while _I_ kick their asses,” Steve says, raising an eyebrow.

“Touché. Hey, there’s something I want to say to you, too.”

“Okay, go ahead.”

“Nice clothes,” Bucky says. “Take ’em off.”

 

Quietly, without making any fuss about it, Steve takes an afternoon off from all things Avengers and walks down Fifth Avenue to St. Patrick’s Cathedral for mass. Not confession—first off, he’s damn well not penitent about loving Bucky, because he can’t believe that any inherently good God could find fault with that no matter what the Church has to say about it, and second, because he’s pretty sure he’d get thrown out if he started with _bless me, Father, for I have sinned, I haven’t been to confession since 1944_ —but he’s not there for himself. (It’s a good thing, too, because he spends at least half of the service trying to acclimate to the fact that it’s in English now, and why couldn’t they have figured that out before he spent twenty years listening to priests mutter in Latin?) Still, he’s surprised how much of the time he _doesn’t_ spend feeling judged and unworthy. It helps that nobody knows him, that he can be an anonymous face in the crowd here, but maybe it’s also knowing that he’s got Bucky now, and the other Avengers, and the Barnes clan, and the fact that they all care about him seems like pretty good evidence that some higher power must think he’s doing something right.

Before he leaves, he lights two candles, one for his mother and one for Peggy Carter. Letting go of them, understanding that neither of them would want him to spend the rest of his life mourning them, doesn’t mean he has to forget. He wonders what either of them would make of the fact that there’s still someone in the far-off year of 2014 who still thinks of them fondly.

He’s expecting the apartment to be empty when he gets back, but when he opens the door, Bucky, home early from the day’s training session, is sprawled on the couch, pale and clammy and looking like hell. “Hey, Stevie,” he mumbles. “Don’t get too close to me, okay? I think I’m coming down with something.”

“You think?” Steve crosses the room to put his hand on Bucky’s forehead. “You did seem a little off this morning. I wondered if something was up. Wow, you’re hot.”

“Well, I know _that,”_ Bucky says, mustering up a smile. “But I feel like shit.”

“I’m sorry.” He prods under Bucky’s chin, and Bucky makes an unhappy noise. “Does your throat hurt?”

“Everything hurts,” Bucky tells him mournfully, and sniffles, for maximum tragic effect.

Steve sighs. He hasn’t seen Bucky really sick before—only injured, which is different—but Becca warned him once that Bucky is his polar opposite about this: when he’s feeling under the weather, he gets clingy and insecure instead of prickly and defensive. “Okay, come on,” he says, resigning himself to a couple of days of helplessness on Bucky’s part. “Let’s get you to bed.”

“No, Stevie, I really don’t want you to catch this,” Bucky says, but it’s a halfhearted protest if there ever was one, so Steve ignores him again as he hauls him into the bedroom. “Fine,” he grumbles, once Steve has him sitting up on the bed, propped up with pillows. “But if you get sick, don’t be mad at me. I tried to warn you.”

“I won’t get sick. You know why? Because what you have is the flu, and unlike some people, I went and got a flu shot like a goddamn grownup.”

“I didn’t think I needed one,” Bucky protests hoarsely, while Steve tugs his shirt over his head and resists the urge to snap, _Tell that to 1918_. He doesn’t remember the pandemic, but his mother’s stories about it were horrifying; it genuinely baffles him that there’s a vaccine now and people still choose not to get it. “I hardly ever get sick. Especially not since…”

“Since what, since you’re Captain America now and you’re supposed to be protected by the power of righteousness?” Bucky doesn’t answer, and Steve repeats, “Since what, Buck? Come on, work with me here. These pants aren’t gonna take themselves off.”

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Bucky says.

When Steve meets Bucky’s eyes, he realizes that he’s stumbled onto something serious. “Hey,” he says, sitting on the bed and laying a hand on Bucky’s right shoulder. “Whatever’s got you worried right now, I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think. Your anxiety always goes haywire when you’re not feeling great, right? So tell me what’s going on and I’ll tell you why it’s going to be okay.”

“It _is_ that bad.” Bucky looks up at him, a little desperate. “I mean, I don’t know for sure, and I didn’t want to tell you until I knew, but I know, you know?”

“No, I don’t know, because you’re not telling me—”

“I think they gave me the super-soldier serum during Project Winter Soldier.”

For a moment, the words don’t even register; Bucky might as well have switched over to Russian. When it finally sinks in, he’s quiet for a moment, and then he says, “What do you mean, you _think_ they gave you the serum? Because when I got it, it was a pretty memorable experience.”

“Well, I mean. It wasn’t exactly like yours,” Bucky says, and then the whole story spills out of him: Asgard, Eir’s theory, the injections that Bucky didn’t think anything of at the time, how he’s been physically stronger and tougher ever since. He’s talking fast, stumbling over his own words, and he’s gotten as far as, “Except I thought you couldn’t get sick if you had the serum,” when Steve leans down and presses his lips to Bucky’s temple, making him break off in surprise.

“Well, I can solve one mystery for you,” he says. “When they said I couldn’t get sick after the serum, they really meant ‘after the process.’ The Vita-Rays were what pumped up my immune system, and you haven’t had those—believe me, you’d know. And even so, I don’t think it was impossible that I ever would’ve gotten sick again. It was just extremely unlikely that I’d run into something my immune system couldn’t easily fight off.”

“Oh.” Bucky shivers, and Steve reaches for the extra blanket that usually stays on his side of the bed and tucks it around his shoulders. “Do you hate me?”

“Jarvis,” Steve says calmly, “can you check Bucky’s temperature on your vital signs monitor, please?”

“One-oh-one point three, sir,” Jarvis replies.

“Huh. That’s a little low for you to suddenly be raving delirious.” When Bucky opens his mouth to object, he says, “Bucky, of course I don’t hate you. I love you, you big jerk. I just can’t believe you’ve been keeping this to yourself since Asgard. You should’ve told me.”

“I’m sorry,” Bucky says wretchedly. “I was—”

“Scared, I know. Why?”

“You know why.”

“I want you to say it out loud so you can hear how stupid it sounds.”

Bucky sighs. “Because you almost died trying to get the serum back, and it turns out I’ve had what you wanted all this time.”

“You mean, because I volunteered for a drug trial when I had nothing to lose, and you were experimented on by a government agency without your knowledge or consent. Look, Bucky, I meant it when I said I’m done with the serum. Yeah, okay, I’ve spent most of my life being little and sick, but I’ve lost track of the number of second chances I’ve gotten already. Besides, May is teaching me how to use this body to my advantage in a fight. If I ever go back into the field, nobody will see me coming. I’ll be a stealth weapon.”

“You’ll be a dork,” Bucky says, with a weak smile. “You’re really not mad?”

“Oh, I’m mad, all right. I’m mad as hell. Do you know what I’m going to do when I get hold of Pierce and whoever else knew about this bullshit? I don’t care what you signed when you joined the program, they had no right to do anything to you without full disclosure. They should be thanking their lucky stars that I didn’t keep Extremis, because there’s definitely going to be a reckoning. Who else knows?”

“Just you. Well, and Thor, and a couple of Asgardians.”

“Good. They can’t exactly destroy the evidence if some of it is off-planet. We need to figure out who else we can trust. If Pierce is involved, then this really could go all the way up to—” Steve stops abruptly when Bucky coughs and huddles down under the blankets. “You know what? Saving the world can wait. Right now, I’m going to take advantage of my chance to take care of you for once, instead of the other way around.”

“Steve, what are you talking about? You take care of me all the time.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, “which of us is a super soldier, and which of us has been sick for probably two of the eight months we’ve been dating _and_ had to get bailed out of jail on a drunk and disorderly?”

“You know, you’re right. I should make fun of you more about that. Steve, look, just because you’ve never had to find an inhaler for me in the middle of the night or reach stuff down off high shelves for me doesn’t mean I don’t need you. You’re my favorite person and you have no idea how much better you make my life all the time just by being you, so stop acting like I’m somehow doing you a favor by being in this relationship. Trust me, if this is a contest of who’s luckier, I’m winning it,” he holds up his left hand and wiggles the fingers, like he always does when he’s about to make an intentionally awful metal arm joke, “hands down.”

Steve can only respond to that by laying his head on Bucky’s shoulder. “We’re a couple of losers, huh?”

“Yeah, but I like us.”

“Me too. And we’ll figure out this serum thing. You know what? I hate that it happened the way it did, but if it’s kept you alive, I can’t be completely sorry.” He leans over and kisses Bucky full on the mouth, frowning at the little amused sound he makes. “What?”

“You do know flu shots are only about seventy percent effective, right?” Bucky says, and laughs weakly when Steve jumps like he’s been shocked.

“Okay,” he says, more to convince himself than Bucky, “that’s still pretty good odds—”

“Yeah, but this is _you._ You just doomed yourself, Stevie. Can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

“Fine,” Steve sighs, defeated. “Then I guess I might as well embrace it. I’m gonna get you some cold medicine and make us both some tea, and we can curl up and watch Dog Cops until we fall asleep. How about that?”

“Can I have coffee instead?”

“Nope. Caffeine would be terrible for you right now.”

“But I’m sick. You’re supposed to humor me.”

“You live with a chronically ill person who’s also _me,_ Buck. Are you really sure that’s a precedent you want to set?”

“You’re mean, Rogers.”

“Yup.”

In the kitchen, while he’s waiting for the kettle to boil, Steve says, “Jarvis, did you hear all that about Project Winter Soldier?”

“Yes, sir,” Jarvis says.

“I want you to delete any recordings of us talking about it. Nobody can know about this, not even Tony. I’m trusting you here, buddy.”

“I’m pleased to hear that, sir.”

“And I also want you to take a look through those S.H.I.E.L.D. files one more time. Look for anything about Alexander Pierce and Project Winter Soldier. Send it to both of our tablets and then erase the search history. We’ll look it over together when Bucky’s feeling better,” he adds, because even though Jarvis presumably doesn’t care, it’s a good line to draw in the sand: no secrets on this one. Whatever happens next, they’re in it together.

“Do you believe these precautions to be truly necessary, sir?”

“I don’t know,” Steve says, “but if this goes as high as I think it does, I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

 

“Come on, Steve, we’re gonna be late,” Bucky says for at least the third time. It’s Valentines’ Day, and they’ve spent the day at the Met, because they’ve been saying they were going to go practically since they started dating. So far Bucky’s been right that Steve would pretty much lose his mind at actually being able to see the details in his favorite pieces—he never made it here when he had his super-soldier eyes—and that art museums in general would be a lot more fun with somebody who actually knew something about art, and got passionate about it in a way the teachers who dragged his classes there on school field trips never did. (Okay, so once or twice that passion has taken the form of a rant about how much he’d like to go back in time and punch even _more_ Nazis for what they did to the great works of art across Europe, and about the restitution efforts that, in Steve’s opinion, don’t go nearly far enough—but what was he expecting? It’s Steve.)

What he wasn’t expecting was that Steve would completely derail his plans to get to the fancy restaurant where he’s going to propose.

“You said the reservation wasn’t until six-thirty,” Steve says, unruffled. Bundled up in an Army-green parka and a red, white, and blue striped scarf Clint gave him as a gag gift, with his glasses all water-spotted from the light snow that’s falling, he’s just about the cutest thing Bucky’s ever seen, which makes it even more of a shame that he’s such a rotten pain in the ass. “It’s Valentines’ Day and I’m not gonna miss a chance to go on a romantic walk through Central Park with my boyfriend. Or it would be, if you’d stop fussing.”

“Do you not understand that I’m trying to give you an experience here? It’s the first time you’ve had somebody to spend Valentines’ Day with since 1944 and I want to give you the whole deal, including the flowers and the chocolate and the ridiculously overpriced dinner in a snooty restaurant, okay?”

“Did you really get me flowers?” Steve says, one side of his mouth turning up in a smirk.

“No,” Bucky lies.

“You got me flowers! Ooh, is it red roses? That’s _so_ romantic.” Steve flutters his eyelashes and pretends to swoon, which means, incidentally, that he stops walking altogether, and Bucky clenches both his teeth and his metal hand inside its glove.

“You are _such_ an asshole, Rogers.” He _needs_ to get there early so he’ll have time to figure out how to slip the rings to the waiter who’s going to bring them out in the champagne glasses, and if Steve is going to keep ambling along like his legs are even shorter than they are, it’s going to completely fuck up his whole game. As if he isn’t stressed out enough about this. Hell, the whole thing is probably a huge mistake. Steve’s barely a month into therapy and he’s just gone back to school at either twenty-eight or ninety-five years old, depending on how you count things; why would he want to make another huge life change right now? This is a terrible, terrible idea, and Steve’s going to have to let him down _gently,_ and then Bucky is going to die and be dead, a corpse on the floor in the middle of a swanky French restaurant. “Why do you always make everything a hundred times harder than it has to be?” he demands, even though it’s admittedly a wash whether he’s really annoyed with Steve or with his own brain for spinning out like this when he needs to keep it together. “Why can’t you ever just—”

“For the love of mercy, Barnes, can’t you read? This is a quiet zone.”

Bucky freezes in place. Steve is pointing at a low green sign next to the path, and he realizes: Steve’s plan to distract him has been a hundred percent successful, because he had no idea the weird little route he was cutting through the Park was bringing him here. “You brought me to Strawberry Fields,” he says, all of his annoyance evaporating.

“Wow, and I thought Tony was the only genius on the team.”

“Would you knock it off with your little crush on Stark already?” Bucky says, but he’s not angry; he’s melting. Steve Rogers has officially turned him into a giant puddle of goo. He’s brought him right up to the IMAGINE mosaic in the middle of the crossroads. In honor of Valentines’ Day, someone has cleared away the snow and sprinkled it with rose petals in the outline of a heart. “How’d you know?” he asks.

“I asked Sam. He said this was your favorite spot in New York, but he didn’t tell me why.”

Steve is still holding his right hand, tightly. It’s a deliberate gesture, Bucky understands. It doesn’t matter that none of the other people milling around are paying the slightest bit of attention; Steve would hate public displays of affection even if he didn’t still carry a little bit of illogical fear, somewhere way down in his bones, that someone’s going to come out of the woodwork to haul them off to jail on sodomy charges. Bucky figures he can afford to open up a little more than usual, too. “My dad used to bring me here,” he says. “You know, with four kids and his Army job, we didn’t necessarily get a lot of one-on-one time with him. When it was my turn, I always wanted to go to the museum to look at the dinosaur bones, and before we left, he’d buy me ice cream and bring me here. He loved John Lennon. Oh, sorry, John Lennon was a musician in this group called—”

“Yeah, I know about the Beatles, thanks. Go on.”

“Well, anyway, it made no sense that my big, tough, career-Army war-hawk dad cared so much about some long-haired British peacenik, but I guess people always have more sides to them than you see.”

“Sometimes the people who want peace the most are the ones who fight the hardest,” Steve says softly. Then he says, “Do you know when I knew you were in love with me?”

“Um,” Bucky says, puzzled by the change of subject. “Was it, by some crazy chance, when I said I was in love with you?”

“You’d think,” Steve admits. “I knew I loved you pretty early on, and I guess I knew in my head that you loved me. But when I really _got_ it, deep down? It was my birthday last year. Fourth of July, I was dreading it, figured I was going to have to grin and bear it through a red, white, and blue cake and pretend to laugh at one-liners that were old when the Howling Commandos told them, and at the end of the day, Tony was probably going to set off fireworks in my honor. And then you, actual Captain America, you who were invited to the White House that day and turned them down, you said to me, ‘You know what, I fucking hate fireworks, let’s go someplace we can’t hear them,’ and you dragged me to that little hole-in-the-wall Irish pub in Bed-Stuy that made the best corned beef and cabbage I’d had since before my mom died.”

“Which I still can’t believe you _like_. It’s disgusting.” Shit, he should’ve remembered how much Steve liked that place. It would’ve been so much more laid back, and he could’ve had a beer or five to calm his nerves the minute they walked in, rather than having to figure out a wine list when he’s honestly unconvinced that there’s any difference between a six-dollar bottle and a hundred-dollar bottle anyway. God, he’s such an idiot. What the hell was he thinking, anyway, trying to impress Steve with dinner at a French restaurant when Steve has been to _actual_ France?

“What I’m trying to say,” Steve says, not to be deterred, “is that that’s when it really hit me that you were in love with me. Not the former Captain America, but _me._ Steve Rogers, the little first-generation Irish kid from Brooklyn who’s too dumb to run away from fights. That,” Steve says, “was the moment when I should have figured out that you’re the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“Thanks, but I don’t really understand where all this is coming from—” Bucky is starting to say, when Steve goes down on one knee in front of him.

“James Buchanan Barnes,” he says, “I’ve loved you pretty much since the day I met you. It took me ninety-five years to find you, and every day of it was worth it. I don’t want to waste another minute of my life chasing after things that don’t matter, when I should’ve known all along that all I really need to be happy is you. So… will you do me the honor of spending the rest of your life with me?”

Bucky stands there, rooted to the spot, for a long moment. A couple of bystanders have gone “Aww,” and one might even have taken a photo, but he’s too stunned to care. “Jesus,” he says, after he’s rubbed his eyes and taken several deep breaths. “Did you come up with that on the spot, or did you write it down first?”

“Well, sometimes you’ve gotta just jump in and hope for the best. I mean,” Steve says, clearly a little nervous about the fact that Bucky hasn’t actually said _yes_ yet, “if I’d really planned it out, I would’ve gotten you a ring. I thought about it, but I wasn’t sure if that was… you know, two guys, there’s not much of a tradition to follow.”

Bucky breaks into a wide grin. “Well, fortunately for you, punk, one of us can actually plan ahead for more than thirty seconds.” He follows Steve’s lead, getting down on one knee, and takes the excuse to press his forehead against Steve’s while he reaches into the breast pocket of his coat. “I’ve been carrying these around since Malibu, and somehow you still ended up stealing my thunder.”

 _“That_ was going to be your Christmas present?” Steve says, almost as shocked as Bucky.

“Yeah, it was. And I’ve wanted to ask you about a million times since then, but I didn’t think you’d feel ready. I guess that shows how much I know. So, Steven Grant Rogers,” he says, sliding the smaller of the two vibranium bands onto Steve’s finger, then turning his hand over and dropping the larger ring into his palm, “I will definitely spend the rest of my life with you. Now, will _you_ spend the rest of your life with a huge dork like _me?”_

“Yes. God, yes,” Steve says, and shakes his head in disbelief as Bucky offers him his right hand. “Are these vibranium?”

“Just the plating. The core is metal from my arm. Um, that is actually sweet and not weird, right?”

“It’s perfect.” Steve grins. “Always knew I had you wrapped around my finger. So, can I kiss you now or do we have to hurry up to get to this fancy restaurant you’ve been fussing about all day?”

“You know what? Fuck that place. Let’s just get some overpriced hot dogs from a street vendor and go home.” Bucky sweeps Steve into his arms, feels himself grinning as he leans in for a kiss to seal the deal. Steve’s mouth opens under his, and the tip of his tongue nudges Bucky’s upper lip. It’s a moment of pure beauty, and Bucky never wants it to end.

“Oh,” Steve says, drawing back, “there is just one more thing we’ve gotta talk about before we can make this official.”

“What?” Bucky asks, pretending his heart hasn’t just fallen into his stomach.

“Well,” Steve says, “you’re gonna have to convert. Bad enough you’re half English, but my mother would roll over in her grave if I married a Protestant.”

Bucky is still laughing when his phone starts to buzz in his pocket, even though he _knows_ he’s had it on silent since they went into the Met, because he’s not an asshole. “What the _hell,”_ he says, when he checks the screen. “You told Natasha about this little plan of yours?”

“No,” says Steve, “of course not, I’m not stupid enough to go telling people before you say yes. Why?”

“Because she just texted me ‘congratulations on your engagement’ and a picture of two kittens making a heart shape. We've been engaged for less than ninety seconds and there are _heart-shaped Natasha kittens_ on my phone, Stevie.”

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Steve says, with feeling. “Did she get a surveillance satellite for Christmas, or is she ten feet away and hiding in a tree?”

It’s probably telling that both of them instinctively look toward the nearest stand of trees before Steve shakes his head and takes out his own phone to reply. “‘Natasha, leave us alone and stop annoying my’—” He breaks off and looks at Bucky with a mischievous smile. “What do I call you now? Fiancé? Intended? Betrothed?”

“You call me your fucking _partner,_ Steve. Have you really not figured out yet that we’re equals in this thing?” Bucky returns Steve’s smirk with one of his own. “Plus, now that I think of it, technically I _am_ your fuc—”

“Sent,” Steve says, and takes Bucky’s phone out of his metal hand so that he can settle it over the small of his back. “Come on, partner,” he says. “We’re going home.”


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **This chapter contains a sex scene.** It's pretty mild so I’m not going to mark the fic as explicit, but if in doubt, skip the middle bit.

“Captain,” Nick Fury says, when Bucky walks into his office in the Triskelion. “I understand congratulations are in order.”

“You heard about that, huh?” Bucky says. He and Steve took the train down to D.C. last night. They’re spending a long weekend in a disgustingly picturesque little B&B in Alexandria, ostensibly just an ordinary young couple deliriously in love and celebrating their engagement.

The real reason is a little darker than that.

“I’m the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D.,” Fury says, and Bucky honestly can’t tell if that’s tolerant amusement in his voice or a faint, unspoken threat. “I hear _everything.”_

“Well,” Bucky says, in the sir-yes-sir voice he hasn’t had much use for since the Army discharged him, “congratulations gratefully accepted, sir. But as much as I’d like to, I’m not here to talk about me and Steve. I asked for this meeting because I need some information about Project Winter Soldier.”

Fury gives him a measuring look. “And considering you were part of that project, Captain, what do you expect me to be able to tell you that you don’t already know?”

“Well, here’s the thing, sir.” Bucky picks up a pen from the desk, turns his metal arm over, and makes a fist, so that the plates slide down and slot together. Then, taking a deep breath and bracing himself, he jabs the pen into the small space that opens up in the crook of his elbow. There’s a faint pulse, like the electronic crackle of turning on an old TV screen, and his arm goes dead. It doesn’t hurt, but it sets a faint alarm pinging in the back of his brain somewhere when the sensation cuts off; if flashbacks are a ten on his horror scale, this is only about a three, but that doesn’t make it _pleasant_.

_Romanoff, this bug zapper of yours better be as good as advertised._

Fury looks—well. Fury only has one expression, as far as Bucky knows, and it’s sort of a look of perpetual silent judgment, but somehow or other he makes that look intensify. “What the hell did you just do?” he says, and he doesn’t raise his voice, but all the hairs on the back of Bucky’s neck stand up.

“Electrical disruptor, sir. Temporarily disabled any listening devices that may have been in the room. Sorry if it took out anything important, but I had to err on the side of caution on this one. The pulse only stays on for about five minutes, so I’ll have to talk fast.”

“Start with why I shouldn’t have you thrown out of this building right now for bringing in unauthorized technology,” Fury says, and oh, yeah, that’s advanced a little beyond a nebulous threat. Bucky figures he has about fifteen seconds to make his case.

“Sir, I wouldn’t have—God, I can’t believe I’m about to say this— _disarmed_ myself if I didn’t have good reason.” Bucky takes a deep breath. “I came here to tell you that I know about the serum, sir.”

Fury’s lip curls in an expression Bucky can’t read at all. “If you’re talking about Project Rebirth, Barnes, that’s more or less public knowledge at this point.”

“No, sir. I mean I know that some variation of super-serum was given to me.”

There’s a long moment of silence, and Bucky can’t help but think the clock is ticking down, until Fury finally says, “Explain.”

“I know it pissed off S.H.I.E.L.D. Intel that I couldn’t tell them much about Asgard except that it was pretty, sir. I mean, their tech is so far ahead of ours, it’s like asking a caveman to explain a microwave. But when I was there, one of their doctors told me that I wasn’t a standard-model human anymore—in a way that goes beyond the metal arm, I mean. She said I was different on a cellular level, like something changed me. _Enhanced_ me. And she gave me a pretty short window for when that change must have happened. So I had Banner do a metabolic workup on me.” That was Steve’s idea, and it was a stroke of genius, because Bruce is a guy who’s hard to intimidate and maybe literally impossible to kill. “He agrees with the Asgardians. I don’t have the four-times-faster metabolism, but it’s maybe one and a half to two times as fast as your average person’s. He also said I’m a little stronger and faster than I should be if you just look at my weight and muscle mass. Plus, every time I’ve gotten hurt the last couple years, the doctors have told me I healed faster and cleaner than they expected. I thought that was either just good genes or dumb luck until I started putting the pieces together. I guess I really should’ve figured it out when you recruited me, though. The Army ran Project Winter Soldier, but there were some scientists on loan to the project from S.H.I.E.L.D., and Secretary Pierce was pretty heavily involved in it, too. I figure he must’ve been the one who recommended me for the Avengers.”

“Barnes, are you accusing the Secretary of State of illegal genetic experimentation?”

“I’m not accusing anybody of anything, sir. And I’m not going to go to the press, or anything like that. I’m not interested in facing a court martial over disclosing classified information. I just want to know for my own sake: is it true?”

Fury is silent again, and Bucky hasn’t worked as a sniper for a while, but yeah, he knows this feeling. This is the half-heartbeat between pulling the trigger and feeling the kick of the rifle against his shoulder. This is where he watches the mark to find out whether he’s blown the mission or made the kill shot.

Then Fury says, “You are not to speak to _anyone_ about this, do you understand?” and Bucky lets out a breath.

“Yes, sir.”

“Who else knows about this… theory of yours?”

“Well, Thor and a couple of other Asgardians, obviously,” he says, because Steve was right: you can’t threaten them and you can’t destroy evidence if it’s off-planet. “Banner, who did the workup. And Romanoff, because I asked her advice—she’s the one who told me to bring this straight to you, sir. She figured, if you knew, then no harm done, and if you didn’t know, you’d want to.”

“And Rogers?”

“No, sir,” Bucky lies through his teeth.

“You’re keeping this from the man who’s about to be your husband?”

“The serum’s sort of a sore point for him, sir. I didn’t think he’d react too well.” That part isn’t even a lie. As for the part that is—well. Steve has suffered enough for the sake of various super-serums, and Bucky isn’t about to get him caught up in any more of this plotting and scheming if he can help it.

He can’t tell if Fury believes him or not, but apparently calling Captain America a liar to his face is one step further than he’s is willing to go at the moment. “Have Romanoff send me Banner’s test results on an encrypted channel,” he says. “Wait to hear back from me. And tell them both what I told you—you’re under a direct order not to speak of this to anyone. That includes Stark, Wilson, Barton, and anyone else at S.H.I.E.L.D., regardless of their security clearance.”

“Yes, sir.” That was pretty much the plan anyway. Tony’s at the Mayo Clinic, recovering from having the arc reactor and the shrapnel it was holding back taken out of his chest cavity, so it’ll be easy to keep this latest development off his radar. And Bucky hates the idea of deliberately keeping a secret from Sam and Clint, but it’s partly for their safety, too. Nobody can have a secret tortured out of them that they don’t know, and aside from his family and Steve, they’re the first people anybody who wants a sample of his blood could use for leverage.

Which reminds him.

“Sir, there’s one more thing. I think you’ve got a mole at S.H.I.E.L.D.”

“And what makes you say that?” Fury says, in a distinctly weary voice.

“When Steve was looking for a way to get the serum back, he talked to a scientist friend of his who was working in the New York S.H.I.E.L.D. base. She told him about Killian and Extremis, but she also warned him off talking to the guy—told him she didn’t trust him. A couple days later, Killian reached out to Steve, tried to draw him into the Extremis program so he could get a blood sample—and we both know what eventually happened there. It wasn’t until Steve and I talked it all through that he realized how fishy it was that somebody _without_ any kind of security clearance, who shouldn’t have had access to anything S.H.I.E.L.D.-related, knew exactly who Steve was and what had happened to him when he got in touch. He doesn’t think his friend did it—maybe they just plain got overheard in the break room, or maybe she innocently mentioned it to somebody who she thought she could trust, who was already in bed with Killian. But it’s pretty clear that somebody, somewhere, was feeding secrets to an outsider. I figured you’d want to know.”

“Consider me advised,” Fury says. “Anything else, Captain?”

Jesus, this guy has a hell of a poker face. “No, sir,” he says.

“Dismissed. And, Barnes—” He glances at the arm. “Don’t pull a stunt like that again.”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky says. The whole thing has taken less than the five minutes he was promised, and the sensation in the metal arm hasn’t come back yet, but he knows not to push his luck. He cradles his temporarily dead limb against his chest and gets out while the getting’s good.

 

After Barnes leaves, Nicholas Fury sits alone for several minutes, thinking.

He remembers, very clearly, when Alexander Pierce suggested Barnes for the Avengers Initiative. He remembers Pierce praising Barnes’ toughness, his determination, his obedience. He also remembers Pierce talking about what the metal prosthetics were capable of in close combat, in addition to the added strength and steadiness that had elevated Barnes’ already excellent marksmanship to a whole new level. The Stark prosthetics that replaced the Winter Soldier designs were lighter and cheaper, full of polycarbons and space-age alloys, but they never achieved the same brutal potential of the original metal limbs. “You remember the Cold War theory as well as I do,” he’d said: “that one agent in the right place at the right time, with a certain set of skills, can be more effective than an army. Under different circumstances, Barnes could have been that agent for us,” and they’d gone on to commiserate about eternal budget cuts and an ungrateful public that doesn’t understand the harsh truths men like them face every day.

It was right around the same time, as Nick recalls, that Alex started pushing hard for Project Insight, a massive enterprise that absolutely never would have gotten approval if not for the Chitauri invasion. But it was Alex’s dream for a long time before that.

_If_ he was quietly revisiting the old research on the Erskine formula around the same time, and for the same reasons, Alex is under no obligation to tell Nick anything about it—not as a friend, not as the Secretary of State speaking to the Director of S.H.I.E.L.D., and not as one man who understands the brutal reality of the spy game to another. But the Alex he thought he knew wouldn’t have requisitioned S.H.I.E.L.D. resources for Project Winter Soldier without telling him the full and unvarnished truth about why.

Barnes was right to bring this to him directly. An Alex who would hide something like this from him… that’s a game changer in more ways than one.

Nick doesn’t know what else Alex might be keeping close to his vest. And despite what his underlings at S.H.I.E.L.D. would say about him, he doesn’t like to be the kind of man who’d suspect a friend. But as with most things at S.H.I.E.L.D., this goes far beyond what Nick Fury likes or dislikes. If there’s a secret here that could affect S.H.I.E.L.D.’s security, he’ll ferret it out.

 

Steve has lived a much longer, much stranger life than he ever expected to, but looking at his own grave is definitely one of the weirdest feelings he’s ever had. “I’m glad,” he says, and swallows hard. “I’m glad they got it right. I’m glad they didn’t do a Steve Rogers memorial. I mean, I know they’ve done a lot of them around the country, but this is the way it should be.”

“I like that everybody’s on equal footing here,” Bucky agrees. He’s got his arm around Steve’s shoulders, and Steve is grateful for the comfort. He can’t imagine what it would have been like to come here alone. “Arlington does a pretty good job that way.”

Steve nods, takes off his glasses, rubs his eyes. “Every one of them saved my life half a dozen times over,” he says. “The history books go on and on about how I rescued them from Krausberg, but nobody seems to remember how much I owe every one of them. I wouldn’t have… I wouldn’t be here if…”

He can’t finish, but Bucky clearly understands and doesn’t press him, even though they’re both standing in snow up to their ankles and more snow is falling, turning the whole world into a haze of white. He steps forward and touches the gray stone wall. There’s a copper replica of the shield attached to it, long since green with age, and under that are seven names evenly spaced across the stone, followed by dates of birth and death.

He looked it up, before they came here, so he knows that only three of the Commandos are actually interred in the adjoining lot. It’s no surprise that Dernier and Falsworth are each buried in their home countries, so it’s just Jones, Morita, and Dugan who’ve chosen this place as their final legacy. There are five headstones, though. One was made for him, just in case they ever found his body in the North Sea; Howard, bless him, searched for the downed Valkyrie for a lot longer than anybody considered sensible, and he wanted there to be a place of honor for Steve if he was found. Peggy’s grave was never meant to be anything but symbolic; there was simply no way to recover her body after the train.

“Are you okay?” Bucky finally asks. And Steve isn’t, obviously, but that’s not the point; it’s just a gentle reminder that he can talk if he wants to.

He nods, even though Bucky will know it’s a lie, and steps forward. There’s no weight at all to the wreath in his hands. He lays it against the wall, a splash of red against the white snow, then takes a step back, turning to Bucky, expecting him to be ready to go.

To his surprise, Bucky steps forward and touches the wall with his metal fingertips. “I never met any of you,” he says softly, almost inaudibly, “but thank you. Thanks for not giving up in Krausberg, one POW to another. And thanks for keeping my Stevie alive through the war so we could find each other. I’ll take good care of him for you. If,” he adds, “the stubborn asshole will let me.”

That chokes a laugh out of Steve, in spite of everything. “Every one of them would have agreed with you,” he says. “And they would have so many stories to tell you about the crazy things we got up to in the European theater.”

“Well, I definitely would’ve told them about you losing your lunch at Coney Island, that’s for sure.”

“You’re never going to let me live that down, are you?” Steve says. He knows he’s leaning more heavily on Bucky than he ought to be—that Bucky is basically the only thing holding him up right now—but Bucky doesn’t seem to mind at all.

Neither of them has much to say on the way back to the B&B, but when they let themselves into their room, Bucky starts running a hot bath in the garden tub. “Go get warmed up,” he says. “I’m gonna get a fire going.”

Steve hasn’t exactly had an easy time dealing with being cold since the Arctic ice, less so since Extremis, so he accepts the act of kindness gratefully and sinks into the bath, letting it thaw his numbed hands and feet and unclench the tight muscles in his back. By the time he comes out of the bathroom, Bucky has made good on the promised fire and is stretched out like a cat on the rug in front of the fireplace, wet shirt and socks stripped off and tossed aside, jeans riding low on his hips. The firelight flickers over his broad chest and paints the metal arm orange. He sits up, spreading his legs wide, and looks up at Steve with pink lips parted, eyes half-hopeful and half-hesitant. Steve knows that he only has to look away and that’ll be the end of it, knows it even before Bucky says, “I know today was a lot, so if you want me to get out of here and give you some space, I can go downstairs and read for a while.”

“I think what I want is to feel alive, right now,” Steve says. He drops the towel he’s wrapped around his waist and steps forward, kneeling between Bucky’s outstretched legs.

Bucky presses his face to Steve’s chest and wraps him up in his arms, metal hand cool on his hip, flesh hand cupping his ass. Steve responds by burying his own face in Bucky’s hair, tightening his arms around Bucky’s neck while Bucky presses open-mouthed kisses against his chest, over his heart. Then Bucky is sliding him forward, lowering him to the floor as his mouth moves across the sensitive skin over his ribs. When Bucky’s tongue traces down the trail of fine gold hair at the base of his stomach, Steve falls back to one elbow so he can bring his other hand up to tangle in Bucky’s rich dark hair. He moans, hips rocking upward, while the part of his brain that’s still working tells him that this—this vulnerability, this openness, this love—this is what happiness feels like. A couple of shuddering heartbeats after that, Bucky takes him into his mouth, and he loses every conscious thought beyond _yes, yes, yes._

 

“The timetable has moved again,” Alexander Pierce says. “We need to speed up completion of Project Insight.”

Jasper Sitwell looks at him. The timeline has been carefully planned out for months now, maybe years—everything coming together at the precise point when the algorithm projected that things would tip in their favor. Moving it now will be a monumental enterprise. He’s not going to refuse—he knows _very_ well that this organization has no use for people who aren’t willing to put in the effort—but he does say, “May I ask why, sir?”

“Fury suspects,” Pierce tells him. “He doesn’t know what _to_ suspect yet, but my sources inside S.H.I.E.L.D. tell me that he’s been calling up old files on Project Winter Soldier. There’s no reason to think he’ll connect the project with the serum, much less with the Asset, but if by some chance he did, it could blow the whole thing wide open.” Pierce sighs. So far, Barnes is proving to be a significant miscalculation. It’s Rogers’ influence, he’s pretty sure; until Rogers was in the picture, Barnes was a model soldier, unwavering in his protective instincts, just needing a small push to put his considerable skills to use in the service of the right cause.

The things Barnes could have done for Hydra, if Rogers hadn’t clung to life in that glacier and woken up just in time to throw a second wrench into Hydra’s plans…

Oh, well. Pierce isn’t the type to cry over spilled milk.

“Do you think Barnes surviving the assassination attempt tipped him off, sir?” Sitwell asks.

Pierce shakes his head—not a negative, but an _I don’t know._ “It’s a shame the Asgardians chose to intervene in this one, but we can’t fight them. Our cause isn’t lost, though. We can still take Fury and his Avengers out of the equation easily enough.”

“Should we send in the Asset, sir?”

“Not yet. Right now, S.H.I.E.L.D. assumes Barnes was wounded by one of Killian’s agents. We’ll hold off on using the Asset again until things settle down. And next time, we’ll make sure we don’t get sloppy. If we hadn’t left her out of cryo so long, she never would have left that kind of lag between the first shot and a confirmed kill.”

Pierce can’t really feel too bad about it, though. The botched execution has turned out to be a blessing in disguise. Barnes’ near-death and miraculous recovery are great PR, a feel-good story for the holidays. It’s the perfect setup to create even more reactionary horror when Captain America is finally murdered, visibly and publicly, by yet another group of terrorists looking to intimidate and destabilize. Just a few more nudges toward chaos, and the soft, complacent citizens of this country will gladly throw themselves at their new masters’ feet.

He looks toward the cryogenic chamber, the glass coffin where the recently repaired Asset lies dreaming, and says, “Hail, Hydra.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear ones! Thank you SO MUCH for reading. I’m sincerely blown away by how kind you’ve all been. This fandom is awesome. And YOU’RE awesome. Yes, you specifically.
> 
> For those who have kindly inquired about whether there’s more to come: JUST TRY TO STOP ME. I _may_ take a short break to work on a short Team Stegosaurus story, but I’m having too much fun with Shrinkyclinks to stop for long. 
> 
> The next fic in this series will cover the events of _Captain America: The Winter Soldier_ in this AU and is titled **Pyrolysis.**


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